San Jose Museum Of Quilts And Textiles Celebrates 40th Anniversary

The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles announced today that four special exhibitions - Juncture I, Expressions of Identity: 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Identity Tapestry: Mary Corey March and JUNCTURE II - will honor the Museum's 40th Anniversary from October 2017 - January 2018. The 40th Anniversary Celebration will begin with a special panel, Master Your Craft: A Conversation with Artists, Gallerists and Collectors, on Sunday, October 29, 2017 ($15 for members and 25 for non-members) from 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (following by an Opening Reception from 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.).

"Since our 35th anniversary, the Museum has focused its collecting efforts on historic and contemporary quilts and fiber art since 1940, with an emphasis on California artists" said Executive Director Nancy Bavor. "This exhibition, which includes over 40 art works acquired since our 35th anniversary, is tangible evidence of that concentrated focus and includes important art works by some of California's leading fiber and quilt artists, as well as works by other internationally known fiber artists."

Expressions of Identity: 40th Anniversary Exhibition is currently on display in all galleries (excluding the Porcella Gallery) thru January 14, 2018. The Museum describes the exhibit as follows: Inserting one's identity is inherent in the process of an artist and their body of work. As San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles celebrates its 40th year, we reflecon our own identity and highlight pieces from the Permanent Collection acquired in the last five years.

Juncture 1: 40th Anniversary Member's Exhibition is currently on display in the Museum's Porcella Gallery thru November 26, 2017. It will be followed in the Porcella Gallery by Juncture 2: 40th Anniversary Member's Exhibit (November 29, 2017 - January 14, 2018). The Museum describes the Juncture exhibits as follows: Now in its fortieth year, the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles is at a juncture in time, where we can both reflect on the past and look forward to the future. A juncture can also be an intersection of place or events, often one laden with symbolic potential: In many folk traditions, junctures as represented by crossroads are a potent metaphor for transition. Though a juncture can be a time for reflection, the word can also describe a critical moment or crisis that demands immediate action. With the concept as their point of departure, artists may take the exhibitions theme for "juncture" where it leads them.

Identity Tapestry: Mary Corey March is currently on display in the Museum's hallway thru January 14, 2018. The Museum describes the exhibit as follows: Through a variety of mediums, artist Mary Corey March explores questions of individuality, humanity, data, and expression. March's participatory installation Identity Tapestry will enlist SJMQT visitors in creating a portrait of our community. Participants choose a ball of yarn to trace along the framework of statements pinned to the wall. These statements begin with basic biographical information, such as "I am a woman," but splinter off into more complex facets of identity: "I have seen someone dying," "I stop to enjoy a beautiful moment," "I am fortunate." Connecting point to point with their yarn, participants trace out the paths of their identities, making visible the ways in which we are the same and different from one another. In each of its locations, including San Francisco, Pepperdine University, Southern Vermont College, and Pfäffikon, Switzerland, Identity Tapestry thus becomes a work of art as unique as the people who contribute to it.

A special panel, Master Your Craft: A Conversation with Artists, Gallerists and Collectors, will take place on Sunday, October 29, 2017 from 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Admission to the event will be $15.00 for members of the Museum and $25.00 for non-members. This panel discussion for aspiring and established artists will be moderated by Tien Chiu and feature artists Chandra Cerrito, Modesto Covarrubias, Penny Nii, Sabine Reckewell, KC Rosenberg and Flo Oy Wong. Registration is available online at sjquiltmuseum.org.

Artist bios are below:

Tien Chiu is a nationally recognized, award-winning weaver with a deep interest in the creative process. Her work has been featured on the cover of Handwoven magazine, and her handwoven, couture-sewn wedding dress is part of the Permanent Collection at the American Textile History Museum. Her book Master Your Craft: Strategies for Designing, Making, and Selling Artisan Work distills her experience and that of 22 other master artisans to help intermediate artisans make the leap to mastery. When not catering to the whims of her cats, Tigress and Fritz, or her husband Mike, Tien blogs, coaches and teaches at www.warpandweave.com.

Chandra Cerrito is an art advisor, curator and the director of Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, a gallery in Oakland, CA. She received a BA in art history and a Certificate of Visual Art in printmaking from Princeton University and an MFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts. Since 1991, Cerrito has worked in galleries and art consulting firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, as manager, assistant to the director and art consultant. In 2004, she started her own art consulting firm, Chandra Cerrito / Art Advisors, in Napa, CA, which helps create collections for corporate, retail, hospitality and health care facilities. Cerrito and her associates also provide curatorial services including developing rotating exhibitions for public spaces and acting as curator for the David Brower Center in Berkeley. For more information, visit www.chandracerritocontemporary.com.

Since 2010, Sabine Reckewell has been exhibiting temporary and permanent installations made with linear materials at many art institutions in and around the Bay Area. Her work is represented by the Oakland gallery Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, where she has had several one-person shows. Most of her installations are site-specific and many are large-scale. Through the use of geometry and repetition she is creating shapes and patterns that shift and change as the viewer moves around her work. For more information, visit www.sabinereckewell.com.

The collaborative duo known as RoCoCo is comprised of KC Rosenberg and Modesto Covarrubias. These interdisciplinary artists describe their practice as a dialog of making, and they are interested in the juxtaposition of materials and response to space (architectural and natural) in their exploration of complex emotional states, social justice, and contemporary culture. RoCoCo's work most often takes form through sculptural installations, but has also included video, performance, drawing, painting, and audience participation. RoCoCo began collaborating in 2015 at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland, California, and has gone on to show work at the Oliver Arts Center in Oakland, and the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga. They are currently artists-in- residence at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. RoCoCo is short for Rosenberg Covarrubias Collaborations (or collaborative, conspirators, conversations, corporation, coalition, commentators, co-editors, collective, cohorts, you get the idea...). For more information, visit www.rococoprojects.com.

In 1999, Penny Nii was asked to be one of the jurors for an exhibition at the San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum called "Out of Time." For jurors' exhibition, she decided to make a book that hung on a wall. That was the beginning of a new journey for her in the world of book arts - to think about book forms that have functional purpose. In particular, to think of book structure as an integral part of the narrative. Recently, she added a new challenge: to make books that, when opened, become 3-dimensional objects. A book that is also a sculpture. For more information, visit www.penny-nii.com.

Flo Oy Wong, a 1997 recipient of an installation/new genre fellowship from the Arts Council of Santa Clara and a Nebraska Arts Council Grant, was born and raised in Oakland, California's Chinatown. A contemporary mixed media installation artist since the age of 40, Wong creates narrative work that features personal, cultural and collective tales. She displays her work locally, nationally, and internationally in group and solo exhibitions. In 1994, Wong exhibited in the inaugural National African American Museum Project show at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. An Oakland Chinatown drawing is currently featured at the US Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia under the sponsorship of the Art in Embassies Program of the US Department of State. Wong is also showing in a three-year traveling Exhibits USA exhibition entitled "Pure Vision: American Bead Artists." For more information, visit www.flo-oy-wongartist.com.

The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles hours are: 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; closed Mondays, Tuesdays and major holidays. Admission is $8.00 general; $6.50 students and seniors; and free to Museum members and children 12 and under. Admission is 'pay what you can' on the first Friday of each month. The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles is located at 520 South 1st St. San Jose, CA 95113. For more information, call 408-971-0323 or visit www.sjquiltmuseum.org.

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