Due to campus closures from COVID-19, Gallery ʻIolani at Windward Community College, is giving the community an opportunity to view the Hawaii Craftsmen’s Fiber Hawaiʻi 2020 exhibit from the comfort of their own homes. Viewers can take a virtual tour of the exhibit on Windward CC’s YouTube channel and see photos at Gallery ʻIolani’s website.
The biennial juried exhibition consists of objects made “IN, OF or ABOUT” fiber. It provides a space for the conflation of ideas such as art and craft; traditional and contemporary; functional and non-functional; past, present and future.
Fifty-one artworks from 33 artists include mixed media fiber and ceramic sculpture, light installation, handmade paper, kapa, basketry, embroidery, felting, surface design and wearable textiles, fabric collage and more.
“A masterful exhibition showing the dynamics of fiber and the artists who created the work,” said Gallery ʻIolani Director Toni Martin. “Variations of form and method bring awareness to fiber art. The aura of color and forms melding together is a feast for the eyes.”
The pieces were selected by mother-daughter juror duo Junco Sato Pollack (textile artist professor emeritus from the E. G. Welch School of Art and Design of Georgia State University) and Maika Pollack (director and chief curator John Young Museum of Art and University Galleries and assistant professor of art history at UH Mānoa). Their jurying process was a conversation about the significance of fiber art, framed through their familial relationship.
“While mature craftsmanship and resolved design aesthetic is absolutely critical to be successful in a competitive exhibition,” said Junco Sato Pollack, “it is always refreshing to me to encounter an energetic piece that breaks every rule and ends up in an expressive narrative that communicates an artist’s vision. Handcraft emulating a fine art sensibility that is of the textile arena also caught my eyes as it suggests a new direction of our time.”
Take a virtual tour of the exhibit and see the artworks selected.
—By Bonnie J. Beatson
