Made from wool, silk, cotton, birch bark and other mostly natural stuff, the art in "Land by Hand" is a celebration of the ingenuity and skill of 15 Minnesota women. Their wall hangings, sculptures, clothing, basketry and ornaments draw inspiration from the landscape. Pieces range from quilt-like abstractions by Mary Hark, Jill Lynn, Morgan Clifford, Lettie L. Blackburn and Nancy Condon to clever clothing by Mary Mortenson, who garnished a vest with embroidered wheat stalks, and miniature felt landscapes that Jo Wood embellished with beads. In an imaginative tour de force, Vernal Bogren Swift batik-dyed floating figures tumbling to the ocean floor in her astonishing "Earthquake's Kitchen." In her elegant wall piece "Mother, May I?" Kathleen Smith symbolically sculpts a female torso from stained silk that's quilted like contour-plowed farms. Sharon Meyer Postance made paper for her elegant "Grassland" basket from corn husks and other plant fibers harvested on her northern Minnesota farm. After traveling to Bemidji, New York Mills, Mankato and Lanesboro, the show is taking a well deserved final bow at the Textile Center, which organized it.
about the writer
Mary Abbe
It’s too soon to tell how much the immigration crackdown is to blame.
