Fibers, Sara Robinowitz, Anna Voog, Ann Hamilton and Cai Guo-Qiang

Crocheted Hat by Anna Voog

 Many people would not consider fibers to be a type of medium for art. When I think of fibers I think of clothing and weaving and sewing not a form of expression and something really cool to look at. Surprisingly fibers is a truly interesting and beautiful form of art. Sara Robinowitz, a professor of fiber at the University of Oregon, lectured to us about the difference between art and craft. This truly fascinated me. I always thought that crafts were kind of a form of art but I guess a lower grade than real art that is meant to be shown. Crafts are shown in peoples houses or given as gifts, but art is shown in galleries and looked at by art fanatics, not just by your mother. The difference between art and crafts is the hierarchy and the meaning of the two words. Art is higher class than craft, meaning that art is more valuable than crafts are. Professor Robinowitz also talked about fibers is an art that doesn’t really show all that is gone into it. Unlike painting and sculpting, where you can see little details and kind of how it was made, fibers is a finished project. The finished product doesn’t necessarily show the labor, sometimes hard and lengthy labor, that went into making the very impressive piece of art. Most of the time the piece of art looks simpler than is really is. Fiber and cloth have always have cultural significance. By the process by which a fabric is made, or the designs on it you can tell what part of the world it is from. Also with fiber you can tell how expensive the artwork and fabric is because of what it is made of. Fibers has had great cultural effects.

           An artist in this field is Anna Voog. Anna Voog is a musician, visual asrist, and writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Her career with art started with performance art. She set up a webcam that she names Anacam, which filmed her in her house 24 hours a day. She wanted to live her life openly by doing this. While doing her Anacam she got into crocheting and making freeform art with fibers. She would then use her webcam to sell her pieces of art. He pieces of work are very interesting, often times being crazily crocheted hats. Some look like caterpillars and snakes, but others do not really seem like it is supposed me anything more than a really crazy design.

        

      Another artist of this medium is Ann Hamilton. “Ann Hamilton was born in 1956 in Lima, Ohio. She trained in textile design at the University of Kansas, and later received an MFA from Yale University” (art21.com). Her work has often times been considered installation art, meaning art that is supposed to transform the audiences perception of space. Most of the time this is done in the interior of a building rather than the exterior. When asked about her art being called installation art she replies, “ I think the form, for me, of working in installation is one that always implicates you actively within it[…]it's that you're coming in and you're in some instances animating the space, and the process is often very social; for me, that part of it is very satisfying. There's a way that it (the installation) has an ongoing life as it meets the public. Every moment that it's up it's different. It's different from moment to moment, and somehow it's that live time that's just a factor of the form really, or something that is characteristic or inherent in the form is something that makes it continually interesting for me” (art21.com). I find this very interesting that her art is social. It is a new idea to me. Both that she uses fibers and the fact that audiences somewhat get involved in the making of her art. Each day the art piece is shown reactions are different which is a really interesting concept.

  
 Another artist in fiber making is Cai Guo-Qiang. “He was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and lives and works in New York. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art: The National and International Studio Program at P.S. 1, New York” (art21.com). With his artwork he wanted to confront the “controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China” in his art he uses chance and luck to decorate his canvas. For instance his artwork made our of gunpowder going of. The designs is made were made randomly. He states, “I had a streak of bad luck in 2003-2004, and it was told to me repeatedly—through various ways. Bad luck or unlucky things, are in themselves a work—it is a work of a very neutral nature” (art21.com). His work is very random, but is unique and truly amazing. Just because fibers isn’t a done with paint, pencil, paper, or canvas it is a medium of art.