BARBARA M. BERK

Featuring the work of the Artist Members of the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, the juried exhibition Form and Function:  Fiber Arts for the 21st Century features both “traditional and new media that emphasize art over craft with bold use of artistic elements – line, space, shape, form, texture and color to tell an individual story.  The work … [focuses] on fiber as media through unique or novel approaches in technique, material or subject matter.” The Artist Members “experiment with textile manipulation, color, texture and/or diversity of materials, … communicating meaning through mark-making and structure. Stitch, surface, construction, joinery, embellishment … [are used] to bridge craft and design, invoke new artistic concepts and alter or refresh views of fiber.  Each … [Member] brings a personal vision and sensibility to his or her cloth.” Celebrating this diversity, Form and Function promotes “an appreciation of fiber arts in the broader community”.

 

The exhibition is juried by artist and curator Karen Gutfreund.  Gutfreund has worked in the Painting & Sculpture Department of MoMA, the Andre Emerick Gallery, the Knoll Group, the John Berggruen Gallery and the Pacific Art League.  She is a partner in Gutfreund Cornett Art, a curatorial partnership that specializes in creating exhibitions in venues around the US on themes of “art as activism” to stimulate dialog, raise consciousness and encourage social change.  She has been actively involved on the Boards of various arts organizations, is a member of ArtTable and the Northern California TFAP Representative (The Feminist Art Project). Gutfreund also creates her own work, focusing on art as activism to effect social change.  

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My work explores the interplay of traditional fiber techniques with novel materials.  Using Renaissance lace stitches, I play with line, plane & pattern. Using modern industrial wire, I play with texture, volume & scale.

 

"Lace Nine:  Sea Currents" is a Bobbin Lace structure.  Using 28 threads, each over 10 ft long, I created a ribbon of lace 9” wide x 5 ft long, with long loose wires at both ends.  I then looped and curled the flat lace “fabric”, sewing it together with wire to establish the 3-dimensional form, and playing with the loose wires to embroider and embellish the surface of lace.