BOSTON, MASS.- LaiSun Keane is presenting a fiber and textile art group presentation, STITCH! featuring Lovid • Mary Tooley Parker • Michael C. Thorpe • Stacey Lee Webber on view from July 8 - August 21, 2022.
The elevation of textile art in recent years to the realm of fine art is supported by the proliferation of this medium’s representation at major museums, art fairs and art galleries. This exhibition is our contribution to this conversation by showcasing four artists working in textile and fiber art whose works are diverse and provocative. The title “Stitch” refers to mending, joining or bringing pieces together. More than describing an action in textile related work, stitch in a metaphorical sense expresses our desire to see healing in the world we live in, hence making this exhibition an uplifting presentation for the eyes and the mind.
LoVid is an artist duo Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus whose tapestry straddles the digital and analog world. Their work investigates the influences of technology in our everyday lives by combining the craft of tapestry with the aesthetics of digital sonic and sound. This artistic duo has shown widely around the world including venues such as the New Museum, (NY), MOMA (NY), PS1 (NY), Science Gallery (Dublin) and Daejon Museum (Korea). Hinkis graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-arts in Paris. Lapidus received his BA from Harvard University in neurobiology, and his PhD from Yeshiva University in anatomy and structural biology.
Mary Tooley Parker interprets photographic and imagined images into hooked rugs, a traditional form of fiber art known for its utilitarian function. Using yarn and strings of fibers to compose imageries by hand, Tooley Parker promotes the tactile and visual qualities of this art form which taps into the side of the human brain that other art forms cannot. As a former fashion magazine designer, her work is imbued with photographic and stylized sensibility. She received a BFA in Dance from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts and she is the 2019 recipient of “Best In Show” at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Association National Juried Show “Color”, juror Jocelyn Miller of MoMA PS1.
Michael C. Thorpe is a self-taught artist who works primarily in the medium of textile and paper. Expanding his artistic expression, Thorpe created new works for this exhibition, pushing boundaries in the textile and fiber art medium simultaneously questioning the definition of art much like art history luminaries Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons. He received his BA in Photojournalism from Emerson College, MA, and his work is in the permanent collections of both the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA. Thorpe will be the subject of two, forthcoming solo museum exhibitions - Paul R. Jones Museum at The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, in 2023, and Fuller Craft Museum, MA in 2024.
Stacey Lee Webber alters the seriousness of the dollar bill by using hand-stitched embroideries. The faces of past presidents are transformed into clowns and wizards as a feminist gesture to subvert the highly masculine and male dominated imagery on American paper currency. Lee Webber received her BFA from Ball State University, IN, and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work is in numerous permanent collections, most notably the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.
