This document provides an overview of fiber art created by women artists. It features photographs and descriptions of works using materials like yarn, fabric, rope, and found objects created by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Sheila Hicks, and Annette Messager. The works address themes like process and repetition, experimentation, domestic functionality, and community. Fiber art allows these artists to explore concepts of the human condition, humor, pain, and relationships through a childlike and direct style that communicates with audiences.
2. Barbara Chase-Riboud
La Musica Red #4, 2003, bronze with red patina and silk
30 x 15 x 32 in. ( 76.2 x 38.1 x 81.3 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Women and Fiber Art
10. Eva Hesse
Vertiginous Detour
1966
acrylic and polyurethane on rope, net, and papier-mâché
diameter of ball: 16 ½ in. (41.9 cm); length of rope:
approx. 154 in. (391 cm)
Experimentation
22. Grave Doll
PERUVIAN, Nazca or Chancay Peoples
wool, fabric, grass and wood
8 ½ x 11 x 10 in. (22 x 28 x 25.5 cm)
Courtesy of University of Kentucky Art Museum (Permanent Collection)
24. http://artnews.org/moritokyo/?exi=16958
• Painting, photography, articles, objects assembled from found objects, words, stuffed
animals, plush toys, fabrics, embroidery, thread and knitting: these and many other objects
from everyday life have found their way into the art of Annette Messager since she began
working in the 1970s. Keeping her work based firmly in everyday life, Messager explores the
various dichotomies and contradictions inherent in the human condition: religion and
secularity, humor and fear, love and pain, woman and man, animal and human, childhood
and adulthood, life and death, surface and substance. Springing perhaps from meditations on
impulsive collecting or the body, from games with plush toys, or from clever wordplay,
Messager's art possesses both a childlike innocence and a brutality that afford multiple
readings. With a flair for incorporating wry humor into even the most direct confrontations
with negative aspects of human endeavor, Messager is able to move and delight people of all
generations.
• Charming and fantastical, and at times taking strange and mysterious forms, Messager's art
works are "messengers" that talk directly to our souls.
25. • Louise Bourgeois
• Barbara Chase-Riboud
• Sheila Hicks
• Claire Zeisler
• Annette Messaget
• Eva Hesse
• Lenore Tawney
• Jackie Winsor
• Lee Bontecou
• Bettye & Alison Saar
• Kiki Smith
• Ursula Von Rydingsvard
• Magdalena Abakanowicz
• Sarah Lucas
• Kendall Buster
• Meret Oppenheim
• Petah Coyne
Women Fiber Artists