Adrienne Sloane

Working from the Boston area, Adrienne Sloane has shown her work nationally for over 20 years.  As both a hand and machine knitter, her recent work often addresses the political while remaining mindful of the historical context of her medium.  She has taught sculptural fiber both nationally and internationally as well as also having worked with indigenous knitters in Bolivia and Peru.

Her work has been published in Fiberarts, American Craft, Surface Design Journal, The Culture of Knitting and is profiled in the book, Knitting Art: 150 Innovative Works from 18 Contemporary Artists. Sloane has work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Goldstein Museum of Design, The American Textile History Museum and the Kamm Collection.  Sloane’s curatorial work includes the sculptural fiber exhibits Beyond Knitting and Primary Structures at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and Metaphoric Fibers at the Textile Center in Minneapolis.

When did you feel you found your own artistic voice?

Uprooted, Knitted cotton, 44” x 22”, 2010.I think that finding my artistic voice is an ongoing process that has only strengthened with age.  While my childhood exposure to the arts and later travels in Asia both informed my creative energy, my fiber journeys started in earnest in the mid-80’s when I bought a used knitting machine and began to teach myself how it worked.  A book by Susanna Lewis and an article on the work of Judith Duffey inspired me to explore the sculptural possibilities of knitting.

I experimented for many years using hats as a form to play with color and design. However, but for the craft shows, it was a very solitary practice for me then.  Returning to work after a studio fire in 1999, I found my work shifting in ways that more directly reflected my own thoughts and thus felt more centered. With a stronger and more public voice now, I feel I am using my craft best when I am working from a visceral place.

A House Divided, Knitted cotton, 64” x 54”, 2011.

When did you feel your art was your own?

I am not sure why I find something so compelling in the structure of knit, but there seems to be an infinitely interesting way to creatively engage with it. The hats, practical, pretty and fun gave me a starting point of speaking through my work. That period of my fiber life now feels like it was an apprenticeship to my current work as it gave me the tools to be able to express myself without getting caught up in technical details.

Crafting my own artist statement has also helped me understand my own relation to what I do. It reads in part:
Knitting shapes have long been defined by the human form. By moving the context of knitting from clothing geometry to sculpture, knitting becomes a medium with a link to a rich and complex fiber tradition that has the power of history behind it. I knit to rejoin the frayed and unraveled places I see around me.

Line of Fire, Knitted wire, 74”x79”x55”, 2007.

Was there any influence in your life that you felt that pushed your work to another level?

The 1999 studio fire was a seminal moment for me as it forced me to rethink what I was doing and why. During this hiatus, I got very involved in local arts advocacy groups.   In 2004, finally having reestablished a studio and reclaimed my own practice, I found that that this advocacy work helped inform a new vision of what I wanted to be doing in my studio.

For teaching purposes, I keep an updated slide show of the work of current knit and crochet artists and I am constantly amazed by what practitioners are doing with it in both fine and public art.   I also so appreciate those who have gone before and helped gain recognition for this field including those who have had the insight to advocate for its value while understanding the core connections and contributions fiber art has made to the arts.

Sea Change, Cotton installation, knit, 68”x66”x10”, 2009.

     Adrienne Sloane Resources

www.adriennesloane.com

http://adriennesloane.blogspot.com

Katharine Cobey

I spent from the time I was eleven until I was forty writing and publishing poetry. So it was with considerable dismay that I began to seriously consider knitting as a sculptural tool. I knew no one who knitted the way I wanted to, and the world that had previously honored what I did with words actually laughed at the idea that knitting could produce art.  

Feminism is what helped me persist. Using a belittled technique to help overturn its own denigration seemed a personal challenge - one that I wanted to meet. I had written with no holds barred. What except my own fear could keep me from trying to knit the same way?

Bois le Duc, Magdalena Abakanowicz. 1970-71, 26 feet tall

Magdalena Abankanowicz’ work has been a great encouragement to me. My first encounter with her work was photographs in a book of contemporary fiber art. This was in 1979, the early days of my having a studio at the Torpedo Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia. At that time I was feeling isolated about my work. The people working with fiber around me seemed to be largely motivated by sales. They concentrated on making pretty or practical things, clothing mostly. They were extremely competent - one woman even folded a full-scale brown paper replica of the Pieta – but most of them simply made what they hoped was in fashion, or remade what had previously sold well.  The fiber arts guild next to my studio even subscribed to a service that told them what colors were currently “in”.

Though I was only seeing photographs, I was astonished by Abakanowicz’ work. Magda was standing in front of her huge piece Bois le Duc - which towers above and beside her.  It was not that her work was big, it was appropriately big: I realized that I was not alone in my interest in certain subject matters and my use of materials. Indeed, here was someone who set me new standards. Instead of being reluctant about being called a fiber artist, I would work to become a worthy one.  

Boat with Four Figures, Katharine Cobey, 30’long, 12’ wide, 6’ high

Half my forebears seem to have taught English while the rest studied History or the Social Sciences. After making birdhouse collages in kindergarten, I had never drawn or sculpted anything. I had no practice, sense or idea whether I could relate what I saw in my head to what I did with my hands. But the more I studied the structure of knitting, the more I recognized it as a sculptural tool. Not only does a knitter work seamlessly and three-dimensionally, she makes her material and its surface design as she shapes it.Detail, Boat with Four Fibures

Pas Deux Rotating Installation, Hand knit coated wire 45"'h. 15"w. 11"dEven doing variations on a previous idea can be productive, as long as I keep from copying myself. Even commissions come with a caveat. I don’t make things to order. If you want a piece from me, it will be my design.

Perhaps the important word is risk. If I attempt what I have not done before, dialoguing with my materials and techniques I discover at least an impulse to work, and that leads to knowing what I can do and why I am doing it. I shy away from making pieces that are currently topical, on demand. It is easy to get such work exhibited but it takes me a long time to find an authentic visual language to express myself with. With any manual skill, there is always more to learn, more techniques to experiment with, and sometimes/often, playing around leads to new pieces.

 Learn more about Katharine Cobey at www.katharinecobey.com.