Local art lovers are looking forward to the opening of the ninth biennial Fiber Art juried exhibition at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. The show, which is held every two years, runs for five weeks from Aug. 2 to Sept. 8. There will be an opening reception on Aug. 2 at 6 p.m. at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St.
More than 400 fiber artists from all over the world applied to be in the show. Only 65 works were accepted by the jurors. Despite the international call, two west county artists, Angie Frey and Marcia Lavine, made the cut.
Sebastopol Center for the Arts executive director Anjana Utarid said the fiber arts show is one of the center’s most popular exhibits, noting that over 3,000 people came to see the last exhibit in 2017.
“The fact that our little town gets to have international artists of this caliber is really impressive,” Utarid said. “This is really a San Francisco-level quality exhibit.”
Catherine Devriese, visual arts director for the center, and her team of volunteers are busy unpacking the works of art, which are arriving from all over the world.
“In this show, the goal is to have a very contemporary concept, using traditional and contemporary materials,” Devriese said.
“For example, the piece that came in today is done with fiber optics. It’s a traditional weaving — the artist has been working a year and a half on this piece — but it’s weaving of satin ribbons and fiber optics. It goes in a gradation from light gray to dark gray, and she dyed the satin.”
The exhibit features both two- and three-dimensional pieces. Some of the three-dimensional pieces include bowls and human figures as well as wearable art.
One of the three-dimensional pieces, Devriese said, is “a leaf made with human hair that’s quite amazing.”
Devriese said that sometime during the exhibit, fiber artist Shasha Higby will do a performance piece with her wearable art.
“She’s really out there,” Devries said. “You have never seen anything like this before.”
In addition, there will be a few larger installation pieces, Devriese said.
Devriese gave much of the credit for the show’s quality and popularity to local fiber artists Bill Yoes and Joy Stockdale, who have been coordinating the show for 20 years.
“It’s really their baby,” she said. “They’ve been doing this exhibition for so many years that I give them a lot of freedom to install the work.”
Stockdale, who works with Yoes to hang the exhibition, said “I am always surprised how many entries are large pieces. There aren’t many shows to enter for those artist who think big. They go to great lengths to ship or deliver them and sometimes they step forward to install.”
Devriese said that another reason the show gets such quality work is the renown of the jurors: Janet De Boer, former editor of Textile Fibre Forum magazine and current editor of Fibre Forum E-bulletin; Jorie Johnson, a felt artist living in Japan; and Gerhardt Knodel, practicing artist and former Director of Cranbrook Academy of Arts fiber arts program.
“They are well known and well respected, and the artists know they’ll choose quality work, and so they want to be associated with the exhibit,” she said.
Devriese explained how the jury method works: “The jurors don’t see the names of the artists at all. It’s always anonymous. One juror is in Australia, one is in Japan and one is here in the United States, and they don’t know who the others have selected. Judges give each work of art a number between zero and two: zero for work they don’t want to be in the show, two for work they do want to be in the show, and one for maybe. And it gets calculated from that.”
“It’s really very exciting,” Devriese said. “We get work at the highest level from all over the world.”
