Fibers 
Twisted Fun: Danielle Yakle(0)
July 24, 2010 —
There’s a certain macabre fun to Danielle Yakle’s organic constructions. And, as with all abstractions and semi-abstractions, those with a penchant for allusion and hidden imagery will have a field day.
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Going Up: Graham A. Martin
Graham A. Martin takes textile art into another dimension. Literally. The dimension in question? Up.
HISTORY RE-AWAKENED BY CHILDREN
The rooms of old-fashioned furniture showing historic styles and former ways of Western living at the Saint Louis Art Museum are dotted with playful and intriguing visitors — Yinka Shonibare’s headless, colorful mannequin children sculptures provide contrast and commentary about lifestyle, colonialism, and class.
Stitched Symbolism: Kim Eichler-Messmer
A significant number of quilts hover on the border between abstraction and symbol, their construction giving them the feel of religious art. Some suggest liturgical banners, with the circles becoming halos and the diagonal lines the outlines of robes or angelic wings, while others evoke various cultures’ ritual depictions of the rayed sun.
IT’S HER PARTY (SHE IS NOT CRYING)
Women make up at least 50 percent of the population of the planet and our art schools, yet in the larger museum and gallery setting tend to be underrepresented, according to “Who Does She Think She Is?”, a documentary by Pamela T. Boll. In a companion exhibition of the same title at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, artists respond to the age-old challenge of being female (and often also a mother) and being an artist.
Shimmering and Surreal: Jessica Kincaid
The seven works in Jessica Kincaid’s “Habitations,” which opened Friday at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, are by turns childlike and haunting, familiar and disturbing … and yes, in her words, visionary and surreal.
PAST TRADITION, PRESENT PERSPECTIVE
Marcela Díaz’s “En Trama” employs materials and historical elements that are specific to the land that she comes from, Yucatán, Mexico, and are full of social, historical, and emotional ideas. Her installation at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary presents viewers with woven “people” who seem to be inviting us to listen to their stories quietly.
Warm Weavings for a Cool Night: Sarah Skidmore
Skidmore, who is concentrating mostly on shawls (one of which is pictured above) of late, weaves both softness and substance into her work. In her world, comfort and beauty are meant to be lasting commodities … and the products of both careful planning and sudden insight, woven together with a love of color and pattern.
Stitched Smiles: Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson did get his start in commercial stitchwork, true. His creations now, though, are anything but generic. Johnson, “The Stitch Maestro,” blends fun and high technology to produce small, bright works which he shows both locally and at art fairs around the country.
AGGRESSIVELY ELOQUENT
Elana Herzog’s “Unwarped and Deweft,” a portion of which is still on display at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, Missouri, is an aggressive alternative to most fiber art because of its ambiguous execution and gutsy concept.
Les Fleurs du Mort: Bridget Stewart
Bridget Stewart brings violent death and emergent life together in a macabre yet haunting dance … and the longer you look, the more apt you are to find yourself pulled into the procession.
40 YEARS OF CROSS-CULTURAL EXCHANGE
At two venues in the south-central Kansas area, “Images of Paraguay” is a multifaceted exhibition that not only moves deftly between high and low, formalist paintings and functional pottery, but also runs the gamut from the highly abstract to the overtly political. It presents work by some of the best-known contemporary artists of Paraguay, a country with connections to the Midwest via the Mennonites and through the Partners of the Americas connections established in the 1960s.
Casting Call: Matt Weaver
Gender stereotypes, religious judgment, textiles in the hands of male artists — Matt Weaver employs an element of his namesake to make art that works to resolve two seemingly opposing cultures as the church and homosexual community.
CLANDESTINE CREEP SHOW
Just as Alfred Hitchcock deftly crafted psychological thrillers through the exploitation of the seedy and gritty elements of the human condition, Jennifer Boe, Leo Esquivel, and Meredith Host have created a similar eerie and haunting aura with cunning subtlety for “Domestic Discomforts.”
The Greatness of Small Pleasures: Jill Claxton
Claxton intends her work to be a playful antidote to overseriousness. “When my art causes people to smile,” she writes, “I know that I have achieved the desired effect I want my creations to have.”