Winter 2004, pg 14-16

One works with hair. Another uses hemp and pearl cotton. One’s work is a re-structuring of recycled plastics, while another utilizes scrap metal found along the cape cod shore. There is the one who incorporates surgical tape, sutures, and statistics about domestic violence into her work. And there is one who works with toilet plungers and other hardware, just because she likes to.

These are the artists who will be showing their work at “Stitches,” a fiber arts exhibit to appear in two locations, the New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University on Arlington Street in Boston as well as the Newbury College Art Gallery in Brookline. Organized by curator Arthur Birkland and Charles Giuliano, thirteen artists’ work will be on display, their materials, formats, and techniques all vastly different. The works range from small woven sculptures to large, wax-dripped paper bags to long braided hair. Yet the pieces in the snow are connected to another by their sheer beauty, their simple ability to inspire.

Peter Madden makes books. He stitches pieces of his life onto each page, and stitches the pages together. He preserves his experience in this scrapbooks, whose covers are made of inch-thick metal, or wood that he’s found overseas. He then attaches hinges, holding in these pages that contain writing, photographs, stories, scrap metals, fortune cookies, and store receipts. He invited s the viewer to touch the pages, to feel every grain of the fabric. Sometimes it is brown paper that he has dripped in wax, other times the paper in dyed with tea, backed with muslin, thickened with burlap or wheat paste.

His other pieces include scrolls, larger-than-life family portraits, and quilt-like images whose thick stitches are deliberately apparent. He works mainly in earth-tones, allowing his coppers to fade to an ocean-washed sea green, and his hinges to appear rusty and worn. In one scroll, each segment details the bulbous contours of seaweed strands, actual weeds that he picked up along his travels. His work is organic in this way, the aromas of the sea practically emanating from each page. He stitches not with yarn, but with bristly brown packaging twine, bringing a unique element of rugged earthiness to the art of sewing.

Madden is fond of recycled materials, and in this way is most similar to Sophia Ainslie, whose work is made solely of recycled plastics. Originally from South Africa, Ainslie became both disturbed by and interested in what she calls “the American emphasis on consumerism, and the resulting waste from the disposability of mass produced material goods.” Ainslie’s studio is in fact a recycling yard, where she chooses the materials she wants to use, manufactures her artwork, and then later leaves the materials for re-use. She is fascinated by the tension between the vibrant, rich colors of the materials and its actual status as garbage. The “seductive quality” of the waste materials invokes a unique conflict into the viewer’s mind.

This is perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of the Stitches show-this dialogue between the artist/artwork and social issues. The reconfiguration of recycled materials causes the viewer to question her own habits and her own role in mass consumption. Meanwhile, Kathy Bitetti’s work unabashedly raises questions, gives eye-opening statistics, and forces a deep look at the society we live in. When an artist connects her work to societal causes, it is an exciting thing to see. When this happens in a fiber arts show, it is especially exciting. In this way the notion of “stitching” or “just craft” is traded in for the social significance of these works.