In 2015, I was asked to guest curate a textile show by Dorrie Papademetriou, the exhibitions director at The Noyes Museum of Art, NJ. We decided on a show of textile artists who focus on science, and I spent months researching and contacting artists all over the world. This was the statement:
Scientifically Stitched
Many textile artists are concerned with design, stitches and dyes.
Some textile artists are deeply immersed in science, producing felted fossils, knitted organisms and embroidered mathematics, allowing viewers to appreciate even microscopic life forms. These artists are more obsessed with cell forms than stitches. They research the biology/paleontology/numbers before they plan the material work.
The result is art that illuminates science beyond the capacity of any photograph. Cellular forms are explicated in lace, fossil forms are definitively quilted, and numbers are clarified in stitch. The work of these international artist/scientists will be presented in the show Scientifically Stitched at the Noyes Museum.
The show never happened. I always thought it was a shame that it was never seen...and now I have a venue to show it all right here on my blog! So here is all the art that I wanted to show - the pieces that would have been included, the ones I couldn't get, the ones we never could have afforded to ship. Enjoy.
Emily Stoneking, in Vermont, knits animal dissections, showing the anatomy without cruelty. Her website is http://www.emilystoneking.com/
Alvena Hall, in Australia, celebrates the Ediacaran fossils ( found in the Flinders Ranges), in lace. Her website is https://alvenahall.weebly.com/
Ruth Tabancay, in California: 'An assemblage of hand-felted pellets affixed across a wall. The viewer is first grabbed by the pellets' vibrant spectrum of pinks and reds, and then drawn into their disarray. The actual inspiration for the piece is scientifically grounded in Serratiamarcescens, a bacterium that was released over San Francisco by the US military in 1950 to test the population's vulnerability to germ warfare'. Go to her website http://www.ruthtabancay.com/ to see her newest work.
Anita Bruce, In the UK, knits forms of plankton with fine wire. Go to here website, http://www.anitabruce.co.uk/ to see much better images of her wonderful work.
Heather Komus, in Canada, does 'unique embroideries on pig intestine that explore the role of parasitism and the microscopic in an ecosystem'. see more on her website: http://www.heatherkomus.com/
Gabriele Meyer of Madison, WI, says "I like to crochet hyperbolic surfaces. The shapes are inspired by sea shells and nature in general and not surprisingly turn out to relate to mathematics, in particular geometry and topology. After starting out with hyperbolic discs and half planes, I am now interested in more random hyperbolic shapes". Her website: http://www.math.wisc.edu/~meyer/airsculpt/hyperbolic2.html
Daryl Lancaster of Lincoln Park, NJ, is a weaver who made a series of chromosomal images with needle felting slices of wet-felted wool. https://www.daryllancaster.com/index.html
Betty Busby of New Mexico, quilts "Her large and often spectacularly detailed pieces represent biological processes, including cell division and the growth of plants and other organisms". More at her website: http://bbusbyarts.com/
Meliors Simms, in New Zealand, "Dispersantis a reflective example from Meliors Simms’ larger body of work, Living in the Anthropecene, where her art epitomizes a “thoughtful materialization” of our current geological age through social issues concerning the environment".No website, but she has a blog: http://meliors.blogspot.com/
Rogan Brown, in the UK, "His latest paper artwork titledOutbreak, a piece he describes as an exploration “of the microbiological sublime.” Over four months in the making, the work depicts an array of interconnected sculptures—entirely hand cut from paper—based on the smallest structures found within the human body: cells, microbes, pathogens, and neurons".Website: https://roganbrown.com/home.html
Meredith Woolnough, in Australia, does "elegant embroidered traceries capture the delicate beauty of nature in knotted embroidery threads. Through a delicate system of tiny stitches she creates intricate and complex openwork compositions that are then carefully pinned in shadowboxes, just like preserved specimens". Her website, http://meredithwoolnough.com.au/, has an amazing gallery of her art.
Emily Barletta, in Brooklyn, NY, "it’s like a biology text book and a ball of yarn fell madly in love, got married and had a few babies". See her wonderful website: https://emilybarletta.com/home.html