Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Browsing Tag

Columbia Gorge Museum

The Columbia Gorge Museum: Lacing Communities Together.

Sometimes, when you look back, you can point to a time when your world shifts and heads in another direction. In lace reading this is called the “still point.”

Brunonia Barry. The Lace Reader (2009) p.29

***

The words above come from a recent novel where a particular make of lace plays a key role in the plot. (Historical murder and mayhem, inter-generational strife, an imaginative, fun, and occasionally overwrought romp.)

The first part of the quote felt timely in describing a turning point in the world, this March of 2026. The second part referred to something that sprung from the author’s imagination: descendants of the Salem witches divining the future from lace. So not a real thing – lace reading – that I naively assumed did exist. After all, people read tea leaves, crystal balls or cowry shells, why not lace? A “still point” seemed such an intuitive concept.

Our world is shifting and heading in another direction, though, isn’t it? So why do I turn to the topic of lace today, and not to other alternatives? I could think through how we should deal psychologically with our worries and fears, or how to seek community as to not face a crumbling world alone?

As you will see, lace, as introduced today, will speak to all of it.

Burratto Lace Grapevine Motif Italy 17th C

Lace is going to be at the center of this summer’s exhibition and activities at the Columbia Gorge museum. Executive Director Lou Palermo builds on the ideas and successes of previous projects for which she was instrumental during her time at Maryhill Museum. As I reported then, the Exquisite Gorge I and II programs collected the works of PNW printmakers and fabric artists, respectively. All of them celebrated aspects of the Columbia Gorge associated with a particular region. They were eventually displayed on the museum grounds in installations that preserved the geography of the river and its surrounds.

One of the most exciting part of these enterprises were the ways community was involved – community partners were called, and answered with extreme generosity, creativity, in-kind and financial support for all that was happening. Workshops involved library and schools, field trips allowed other artists to learn during master classes, people donated materials, opened their studios. From kids to grown-ups, participation was key – from learning to make prints, to how to weave, or do silk screenings; from studying natural dyes collected from native plants, bee keeping, to learning about Native-American symbols and history associated with the Columbia Gorge.

It was this aspect that Palermo and her great team at the Columbia Gorge Museum wanted to make central in this year’s adventure: lacing communities together. They are encouraging engagement with a heritage art form that will create samplers devoted to core aspects of the region, the trees and the salmon. Under the guidance of a remarkable contemporary lace artist, Maggie Hensel-Brown, everyone who is interested can learn and contribute, not just select artists. By the end of August, the museum will have collected regionally, nationally and internationally stitched lace samplers that will be arranged into beautiful installations reminding us of the value and beauty of the landscape surrounding us.

Czech Lace Emilie Palickova (Detail) mid-1900

Multiple organizations have already pledged their collaboration. From Skamania Lodge, multiple library districts, the History Museum of Hood River County, to several lace and fiber arts-oriented organizations, like the Columbia Fiber Guild, Portland Lace Society, Lacemakers of Puget Sound and not least, the Arts in Education of the Gorge, all will help this project along. Local libraries will even hand out kits with all the necessary materials for making a small lace triangle to contribute to the installation to those interested.

Flanders Lace (Detail) 1700 – 1750

Are you among the many currently grieving the dissolution of the social fabric? That will be counterbalanced by fabric, holes and all, that was produced by a diverse community united in the hope they could deliver a thing of beauty, or at least an attempt to get there – you should see my first needle stitches. Not to worry, Hensel-Brown absolutely encourages imperfection, as long as you have fun trying. Huge relief, if you ask me.

She also provides step-by-step instructions for those new to the art form, both on video and as PDFs. She explains how you can gather the simple materials needed, and what to be on the lookout for, or practice with care. Her instructions are easy to follow, which does not mean that the first steps into needle lacing are a breeze. The needle work requires serious attention. I consider that one of the best ways to distract yourself from other thoughts, mind you. I am grateful for any half hour these days when I am not thinking about what is going on in the world, and strict attention protects my thoughts from straying.

I also found that the repetitive motions, once you have learned the one simple stitch involved in it all, can be extremely meditative. The kind of meditation that stills you and silences the worries for a while in this world that has shifted to yet another war. Check it out – you might find yourself as a part of a community that is learning and connecting while celebrating nature. Just what so many of us currently need.

Here are all the instructions helping with the Community Lace-Along.

https://www.columbiagorgemuseum.org/lace-project

***

Lace has had a complex history, influenced by diverse cultural backgrounds, and dependent on how it was created. Needle lace was started in the 15th century, made by women in Europe, popularized for the next 200 years. That lace is made entirely with a needle using a single thread on a temporary backing, wich is later removed. I love its name: Punto in Aria, stitches in the air. Angry at the world? Stab the air… a peaceful and productive way of letting off steam.

Lace can also be made with bobbins, a technique derived from braiding, developed pretty much in parallel to needle lace, using multiple threads. You can also create lace patterns with crocheting or knitting, but none as fine as the traditional techniques.

The art form and geographically refined patterns spread from Italy to Spain, France, Flanders and England. Lace makers fleeing religious conflicts often settled in other lace producing regions, interchanging patterns and techniques. Lace was a time-consuming art form, much prized as a status symbol for aristocrats or rich merchants. It certainly drew the attention of European painters of the Golden Age who left us with detailed examples of what their patrons wore. In fact, when I hear the word “lace,” it is these paintings that come to mind, long before thinking of fancy underwear, or bridal veils, or prayer mantillas, all commonly associated with the fabric.

Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mary Countess Howe (1760) Detail.

Eventually machines took over the jobs. The manual production knowledge might as well have died out with the professional lace makers after the industrial revolution, had it not been for artists who picked up on lace, and designers who saw its potential. Since the 1970s, there has been an explosion of interest in contemporary lace making, with societies founded to celebrate and educate about lace, museums established to preserve the history, and exhibitions devoted to many aspects of lace production, not least last year’s DesignBiennial in Venice.

How things are depicted changed with ever improved or altered techniques. What it is that was expressed in lace changed as well. Earlier simple geometric designs gave way to representations of nature. (The many gorgeous examples of trees shown on lace were of particular interest to Palermo, given the intended celebration of nature found in the Gorge.) Depictions of nature gave way to whole narratives, with human figures in cultural or political contexts, entire stories implied on small lace tableaus.

***

Here are just two striking examples of contemporary perspectives – Maggie Hensel-Brown‘s work and that of Agnes Herczeg which I find equally thought-provoking.

Some three years ago, Hensel-Brown gathered community to create an incredibly beautiful accumulation of leaves that were then conjoined. Over 400 participants, some 700 leaves, instilling a sense of fragility and resilience at the same time.

Maggie Hensel-Brown Radiance (2023) (Detail below)

The artist’s individual work is characterized by story telling. She takes everyday scenes and infuses them with magic, via a pattern defined by negative space, all with a needle and a single thread. The portraits capture emotions, anchoring those universals in the specifics of our Covid- or Internet-driven times. Details abound, asking us to explore deeper and deeper into the fray.

Maggie Hensel-Brown Quarantine Self Portrait I (2020) (all images from her website)

Maggie Hensel-Brown Sheets (2022)

Maggie Hensel-Brown Not useful, not beautiful (2023)

Maggie Hensel-Brown January 24th (2024)

I cannot wait to see her work in person.

***

Herczeg is a Hungarian artist who combines lace creations with branches and sticks she finds along the local beaches of the river Danube.

The juxtaposition of the airiness of the lace and the hardness of the wood creates a sculptural effect, with each medium competing for attention, yet emerging as an organic whole. I am particularly drawn to her hand coloring of the lace once the needle work is done. It provides additional depth to the configurations, further strengthening the sense of sculpture.

Agnes Herczeg: The resting place, 2019, 5 cm high, Needle lace with silk thread and thin wire contour combined with poplar branch, hand-painted

Agnes Herczeg: The tree, 2019, 9 cm high, Needle lace with silk and juta thread with thin wire contour, combined with beech bark, hand-painted. (Source)

We’ve come along way since the 14hundreds. It is glorious to think that the heritage is preserved and continues to be handed down to each next generation, with ever new twists and turns, not only of needles. Much to look forward to this summer, when the Columbia Gorge Museum will display lace variations and a renowned artist available on location.

4 Comments

A World not of this World.

· River Stories - New work by Kristie Strasen. ·

“I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world.” – Wisława Szymborska

This stanza from Szymborska’s poem Map, the last one she wrote before she died, loomed large in my head when I drove home after a conversation with a local artist who had invited me for a studio visit to explore the project she is currently working on.

Kristie Strasen is a renowned colorist and textile designer, with numerous awards under her belt, and, more importantly, decades of experience in creating pattern and color schemes for high end textiles where execution matches her original visualization. In the decade or so since she relocated from New York City to the Columbia Gorge, she has infused her creativity, her skill set(s) and her curiosity about the history of her new home into ever more ambitious projects at the loom.

Her current endeavor can be described as a work of cartography, in the widest sense. The weavings model reality in the most abstract ways, combining scientific inquiry, aesthetics and technique, as all map making does that tries to capture reality in spatial form.

River Stories will depict the entire course of the Columbia River from the Canadian headwaters to the mouth where it enters the Pacific Ocean, some of the tributaries, like the Klickitat and the White Salmon river, and several sections of the Columbia Gorge Scenic Area.

It is technically a complex endeavor. Strasen enlarged maps that show the geographic features of the river course, bends and all, partitioned the sections into grids and then traced the river course, eventually with dots under the warp of her loom.

With free hand weaving she delineated an exact depiction of how the river runs, through six sections, with background colors reflecting the tone of the respective landscapes, the forests, the cliffs, and the eventual softness at the confluence. The color choices required more than just her perfect eye – because the wool in the requisite colors was of different weight, the straight edges, pride of accomplished weavers like Strasen, had a tendency to be less than perfectly straight, once off the loom. Probably only detectable for experts, but something the weaver had to grapple with given her high standards.

All I can say: The tapestries are a beautiful, but I equally marvel at the way Strasen transforms her curiosity about the world into a specific work of art that shares some of her insights with the viewer.

Curiosity about the world: in addition to a longstanding fascination with maps, the artist devoured the literature about the history of the Gorge, the consequences of Western expansionism, and the effects of human intervention on nature, once she had arrived in White Salmon, WA and made it her home. She felt called to draw our attention to both, the consequences of our meddling with nature, as well as the preservation of it, the latter largely due to early efforts of individuals like Nancy Neighbor Russell, who was instrumental in rescuing the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and Washington, threatened by commercial interests. Russell founded Friends of the Columbia Gorge in 1980, working to protect the Gorge from development and secure it for federal protection, th Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1986.

***

Maps express particular viewpoints in support of specific interests. They can shape our view of the world and our place in it by selectively presenting information. This can be bad when the purpose of persuasion is manipulation. I had written about this some years ago in the context of another map making and art project:

“The goal of suggestive mapping was to achieve political objectives (while avoiding lies, which could be easily exposed) by appealing to emotions and rigorously excluding anything that didn’t support the desired message. Its maps were intended specifically to engage support from the general population, and they were often “shamelessly explicit. Cornell University has a wonderful introduction and collection of maps all sharing the purpose of persuasion. The topics range from religion, imperial geopolitics (think colonialism), slavery, British international politics, social and protest movements to, of course, war. The goal was made explicit in the 1920s (and later taken on in force by the Nazis) when in reaction to the shameful defeat in WW I German cartographers decided to go for the “Suggestive Map,” cartographic propaganda which they thought had given the British a strategic advantage.”

But the way information is presented can also have the positive impact of a warning or an invitation to think things through critically. A selective tool used by Strasen is the color she chose to mark the various dams blocking the natural flow of the river. In my interpretation, bright red bars signify the danger, the concept of halting, the possibility of destruction and the ongoing heat of the discussion around the justification (or absence thereof) of dam removal. These visual magnets emphasize obstructions that we now know had ongoing disastrous consequences for fish populations, never mind the trauma of displacement for the Native American tribes affected by the dam construction. They remind us how much the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest, this river and all who it serves, are endangered by efforts towards relentless extraction, a view shared with the Columbia River Keepers who are passionately engaged in its protection.

***

Maps in art have been around for some time (for a short history of this intersection, go here.)

Art, like maps, can be a tool of persuasion, doubling the force of that intention when utilizing maps’ suggestive power, which can be done in a number of ways.

Mona Hatoum, born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents and living in England, for example, took copies of the flight route maps you find in airplanes, and added hand-drawn designs in ink and gouache. Rather than focussing on geographic borders, she delineated the movement across the globe, leaving to us the decision if that movement was voluntary or not. She herself describes the paths she drew to be “routes for the rootless.”

Mona Hatoum Routes II (2002) Photo Credit: MOMA

Later work employs sculpture, with red neon outlining the continents, representing a globe riddled by hot spots, places of military or civil unrest, a world aflame.


Mona Hatoum Hot Spot III (2009) Photo Credit Agostino Osio.

Closer to home, artist Mark Bradford has made his mark with his large-scale mixed-media works that combine representations of geography and the ruinous fate of residents of depicted areas. The artist models the streets and buildings of specific neighborhoods with string or caulk, layering scavenged paper on top and cutting and peeling away layers to both conceal and expose the geography. Some of his map paintings refer to areas in L.A. shaken by violence in the 1992 riots. Others refer to scorched earth, referencing the Tulsa Race Massacres of 1921 which wiped out Oklahoma’s Black Wall Street.

Mark Bradford Black Venus (2005)

Mark Bradford, Black Wall Street, 2006

Mark Bradford Black Wall Street (2006)

Mark Bradford Scorched Earth (2006)

 
Not all art is, of course, explicitly political. Some, like Juan Downey‘s Map of America, draws swirls of color to stimulate the imagination.

Juan Downey Map of America (1975)

Then there is Maya Lin’s Pin River project – sculptures depicting river courses with pins or marbles, up to 20.000 in this rendering of the Hudson river watershed. She also uses installations created from more than 200 bamboo reeds in the form of a 3D drawing of the Hudson River basin,

<p><em>Folding the Hudson</em>, 2018. Glass marbles, adhesive. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Kris Graves.</p>

Maya Lin Folding the Hudson (2018)

Maya Lin Pin River—Hudson Watershed (2018) detail.

Maya Lin Map of Memory, Hudson River (2018)

All of these works, in their own way, demonstrate that maps can be used for more than an efficient way to communicate spatial information.

This is also the case for Strasen’s tapestries, which are surely more than a tool to help us think about our physical surroundings. Her unapologetically reductive maps offer less context and more of a sense of wonder for a particular place, a particular beauty and history. A world not of this world, and yet.

The blue band of the river, set against an immense backdrop of diffuse landscape coded only in color, gives us a figure/ground constellation that tells a story emphasized by this degree of abstraction: the centrality of a river shaped by forces larger than us, defining a region, essential to its – and our own – survival.

The work will be completed in June when it will be inaugurated during a solo show at the Columbia Gorge Museum.

I cannot wait to see it hung!

Columbia Gorge Museum E.D. Lou Palermo, inspecting a finished section of the tapestry.

4 Comments

Fungi-Curious.

· Julie Beeler and Jordan Weiss at the COLUMBIA GORGE MUSEUM ·

October, time for my annual sharing of the recent beauty I found in the woods.

I’m clearly not the only one preoccupied with mushrooms at this time of year. This coming Saturday, October 19th, Stevenson, WA offers its inaugural Mushroom Festival. In their words: “Whether you’re a seasoned mycologists, blossoming enthusiast or simply fungi-curious, don’t miss this unforgettable weekend in Stevenson, Washington.”

Loved that. Call me Fungi-curious!

There will be culinary attractions, lots of vendors for all things mycological, and workshops and demonstrations, including plenty of kid activities. Details here.

With perfect timing, the Columbia Gorge Museum opens its doors to the community once again with particularly interesting offers. Currently on exhibit is artist Julie Beeler, with works directly and indirectly driven by her passion for mycology. Symbiosis features, according to the exhibition announcement, “immersive ‘tree totems’ showcasing the vibrant hues derived from regional fungi, alongside textile pieces, mono prints, and photographs that illustrate their connection to the environment.”

Photo Credit Columbia Gorge Museum

Beeler derives dyes from mushrooms, forty varieties of fungi to create 825 vibrant natural pigments, dyes, and paints by some count, and creates sometimes wondrous textile configuration that capture the essence of the PNW landscape colors and configuration.

Julie Beeler Fungi Bedrock (2020) Mushroom dyed wool, embroidery thread (41.75” x 28.5”)

In addition, she conveys all that knowledge in a recent published book, illustrated by Yuli Gates, The Mushroom Color Atlas. The interactive feature on the link allows you to pick any specific color and then learn which mushroom provides that kind of dye. The book, overall, teaches us about the mycological world, drawing people into exploration of our natural environment.

The artist will be giving a hands-on pigments, paints and inks demonstration at the museum on Saturday. Columbia Gorge Museum | 990 SW Rock Creek Drive | 1pm – 2pm.

It will be followed, at 3:30 pm by Mycophilia In This Now, a presentation by mycology educator and facilitator Jordan Weiss. The educator will feature spectacular mushroom photography and explore the emerging use of technology for fungi as well as information about psilocybin. Weiss has been sharing his knowledge of fungi for decades, working with groups such as the Oregon State University Extension Master Gardener program and Telluride Mushroom Festival as well as mushroom clubs in Salem, Estacada and Bend.

If you can’t make it out to the Columbia Gorge Museum (it is a 50 minutes, beautiful drive, with easy parking, but I get it…) there is another opportunity to dive into the world of mushrooms. The Oregon Mycological Society offers its annual Mushroom Show at the World Forestry Center in PDX on October 27th, from 12 – 5 pm.

Photocredit: OMS website

Yours truly will seek the pleasure of the solitary (photographic) mushroom hunt instead. Blissfully ignorant about their classification, usage, or poison power, just attracted to their spectacular visual beauty, iPhone in hand, composing the next photo montage in my head.

Music today is the latest installment of DJ Farina’s Mushroom Jazz, compilations started many years ago. One more delightful than the next.

2 Comments

Art as Witness.

These are the woes of slaves;

They glare from the abyss;

They cry, from unknown graves,

“We are the witnesses!”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Witnesses

Just a 50 minute drive from Portland, OR, you enter an entirely different world – old growth forest covering the mountains, steep cliffs, the majestic Columbia slowly making its way through a gorge that was carved millennia ago into the landscape. If you happen to visit the Gorge Museum in Stevenson, WA on your way East, you can currently immerse yourself in yet a different world still – a collection of quilts that witness the life, skills and wisdom of a 19th century slave, handed down to next generations. Named the Hartsfield Collection after the family who preserved the legacy of one of their ancestors, a former slave, it serves as an entry into the patterns of both slave life and quilting.

Crossroads Quilt, Late 19th Century

The accumulated heirlooms are part of a collection created and persevered by a family dedicated to witnessing history, including that of their very own ancestor(s.) The current generation is represented by Jim Tharpe, who realized that the quilts, made by five different seamstresses across four generation from 1850 – 1960, were of enormous significance and able to tell a story that resonated beyond what we know theoretically about quilting during slavery. His insights and persistence to bring something of significant historical value to our eyes made it possible that these quilts are now making their rounds in museums keen, among others, on teaching history.

The exhibition is expertly guided by signage that tells you about the provenance and meaning of each quilt (as displayed in my photographs.) You can learn even more detail in a book written by Tharpe and available at the museum, that explains the family history, the creation of the collection and his purpose in investing his passion, time and energy into the preservation of the collection.

The earliest quilt, the Slave Quilt (1850), was made as personal bedding by a thirteen-year old slave, Ms. Molly, who was sold away from her family to a plantation in Whitlock, Tennessee. Close inspection reveals not just use and tear, but also bloodstains. We will never know if from the whip, rape or childbirth – she bore two sons to her Master, who were fortunately not sold away from the household. Faded, easily overlooked, they nonetheless instill a sense of the horrors of the life that then-child must have experienced.

She taught her skills to her own children and in-laws after the Civil War was won. Eventually the family relocated North, but still trecked to Tennessee many years later to visit relatives that remained there, often under the shadow of racism that put travelers in danger.

Danger while traveling was, of course, one of the hallmarks of the Underground Railroad movement, helping slaves to escape their masters and start a new life somewhere supposedly more safe, if not free. One of the ways to prepare, or to warn, or to help people finding their ways and supportive allies, was a language of communication contained in quilts. Specific patterns indicated specific requirements or signals to those on the move.

Expert quilters might be well aware of this history, lots written about it. For the rest of us, even though we are aware of forms of communication not contained in written words – just think of the knotted messages of the Incas, Semaphore or Braille, sign-language or Morse code – we might not know about the meaning of patterns around in quilts. I certainly had no clue, even though I count two expert quilters among my friends.

The exhibition then, really opened my eyes not just to the creativity of individual seamstresses and the beauty of their resulting work, but the meaning behind much of what was in front of me, guiding me into a world that lacked all the privilege of my own and that holds historical lessons we should well heed.

In general, there were ten quilt codes to be used for the journey, with just one displayed at the time. A sampler with all the codes in small form, secretly passed around, served as a teaching device for memorization of the patterns. The quilts were displayed in windows or hung out with the washing to inform the travelers. The backs and fronts were joined by twine tied two inches apart, with patterns of knots mapping the existence and distance of safe houses along the route. (Ref.)

Here are some of the patterns used in the quilts on exhibit (note, there are variations in names across states, not captured here):

The variety of the artistry shown is helpful for us to understand how form, function and aesthetics go hand in hand. The dedication of this family to relating the skills to subsequent generations and preserving, despite many moves across the U.S. what is a treasure, makes it very clear that they know about the importance of history, and the ways its official telling needs to be supplemented by people who’ve actually experienced it from diverse perspectives.

I was particularly moved to see the oldest and most recent of the quilts exhibited in juxtaposition. The latter was a graduation present to Jim Tharpe, with an inconspicuous love letter stitched into the sidebars, just as the blood stains were inconspicuous on the former. It brought home to me that it is not enough to be exposed to something in order to witness. You have to look. Look carefully. Not leave it to those lying at the bottom of the ocean.

The effort to bury parts of our history, efforts yet again sweeping our country in the form of curriculum changes, prohibition of certain books, elimination of programs dedicated to Black History studies and the like, is hopefully counter-acted by exhibitions like the current one. It brings history alive in front of your very eyes and encourages conversations with those you bring to this show, children included, about what is contained in these beautiful quilts and why it had to be kept secret.

Columbia Gorge Museum

Ms Molly’s Voice: Freedom and Family Spoken In Fabric

June 1 – July 31st, 2024

Open Everyday: 10:00am – 5:00pm

990 SW Rock Creek Dr, Stevenson, WA 98648

Special Event:

“In celebration of Juneteenth, the Columbia Gorge Museum will be hosting an open event where attendants will focus on creating quilt patterns in a dialogue with the patterns and skill of Ms. Molly. Take a guided experience through the quilt exhibition and thanks to some amazing Columbia Gorge quilters, create your own family document in a quilt square. 

This event takes place June19th between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. All are welcome!

If you would like to attend this event, simply RSVP here!“

Here is the full poem from which I took the quotation at the beginning of the review.

The Witnesses

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In Ocean’s wide domains, 

   Half buried in the sands, 

Lie skeletons in chains, 

   With shackled feet and hands. 

Beyond the fall of dews, 

   Deeper than plummet lies, 

Float ships, with all their crews, 

   No more to sink nor rise. 

There the black Slave-ship swims, 

   Freighted with human forms, 

Whose fettered, fleshless limbs 

   Are not the sport of storms. 

These are the bones of Slaves; 

   They gleam from the abyss; 

They cry, from yawning waves, 

   “We are the Witnesses!” 

Within Earth’s wide domains 

   Are markets for men’s lives; 

Their necks are galled with chains, 

   Their wrists are cramped with gyves. 

Dead bodies, that the kite 

   In deserts makes its prey; 

Murders, that with affright 

   Scare school-boys from their play! 

All evil thoughts and deeds; 

   Anger, and lust, and pride; 

The foulest, rankest weeds, 

   That choke Life’s groaning tide! 

These are the woes of Slaves; 

   They glare from the abyss; 

They cry, from unknown graves, 

   “We are the Witnesses!” 

7 Comments
© 2026