Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Little Gardens


This Friday, we will be having a First Friday opening reception of Susie Cohen's fabric collages titled Little Gardens. Her work will be on display from April 7th to May 3rd. Come and meet the artist and enjoy a wine and cheese reception this Friday from 5 to 8pm.

Susie's work is a very interesting mix of things.  On one hand, she very simply makes collages and accessories from the remnants of vintage, (often 100-150 years old) Japanese garments. But on the other hand, her work can be considered conceptual art.  (Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.)  She not only uses embroidery thread and draws on and sculpts the fabric in different ways, but she also reveals elements of fabric that are usually hidden. For instance, she will reveal brilliant indigo hidden in a seam for a century. Yesterday she told me that she likes to think of her work as an onion, as she peals away the layers that reveal secrets and silent stories. These stories may arise from the fact that Susie's work follows the frugal Japanese custom, where garments were hand-sewn, used, patched, re-made and re-worn.


But my favorite aspect of her work is how Susie hopes that when someone purchases a piece of her work, they not only enjoy it initially, but after a while, she hopes that they might tuck it away in the back of a drawer so it may be discovered some years from now by a child who traces the path of stitches with a finger, over and over.


Hopefully we'll see you here!

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