The 2015 edition of Verona Tessile is filled with exhibits that are hosted in many of the most prestigious locations in Verona for a whole week. Visitors are offered a varied overview ranging from traditional Welsh quilts to selected pieces by excellent Japanese artists, not forgetting the great works created by Italian creative talents, encompassing ever-different styles, techniques and themes.2015 Edition of Verona Tessile is full of exhibitions that crowd many of Verona’s most prestigious.
Exhibits are open May 19 to May 24, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Entrance to exhibition sites is free.
Symphony of colors – Japan Quilts
Exhibition of Japanese quilts, curated by Naomi Ichikawa
Japanese people have a strong sense of color. Since time immemorial, meeting with other countries has facilitated the enrichment of Japanese culture and color has become the expression of the fusion of different sensitivities.
When the first quilts made their appearance in Japan—back in the 1970s—they merely represented a hobby of American women. Japanese women, though, have been able to embrace this art through the study of artifacts and production techniques to the point where they have been able to create a truly new form of art, Japanese quilting, where the search for traditional motifs is intertwined with the use of fabric, especially silk, and a marked sensitivity for color and its modulations.
Verona Tessile will put on display 24 quilts, some of them featuring a pronounced Japanese soul, while others present a more diffused—but equally suggestive—impression.
The exhibit is curated by Naomi Ichikawa, a journalist specialized in the textile sector.
Featured artists: Keiko Goke; Yoshiko Katagiri; Akiko Kawata; Shizuko Kuroha; Keiko Yoshida; Yoneko Maruya; Reiko Naganuma; Noriko Masui; Junko Sawada; Noriko Nozawa; Sachiko Yoshida; Junko Yazawa
WHERE: Palazzo della Ragione, Achille Forti Modern Art Gallery, Sala Scacchi
Quilts From The Heartlands of Wales
Old Welsh quilts (1840–1930) from Jen Jones’ collection
From the heart of Wales, Verona Tessile presents an exhibit of old Welsh quilts carefully collected by Jen Jones, passionate creator of the Welsh Quilt Centre, a museum displaying the best of this production, inaugurated in 2010 in the presence of H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales.
Welsh quilting was a family-based occupation, but artifacts reached such a high level of originality and technical perfection that today they can be considered a true form of art. Jen Jones came to Wales around 1970, bringing with her the passion for quilts inherited from her family in Massachusetts. In her new country, she learnt that these masterpieces where in danger of disappearing because they had been forgotten or dismissed as “old bedding”. Jen was keenly interested in preserving the memory of this tradition, and over time her home has currently become a showcase of hundreds of magnificent quilts. Today, her private collection features more than 200 pieces, all of them antique and typical of a century of Welsh quilting history.
For the first time in Italy, these quilts have been on display in many exhibits in Japan, France, Spain, Wales, Scotland, England and in the United States.
Technical Partner: Le Torri – Professione Hobby
WHERE: Castelvecchio Museum, Sala Boggian
Monument
Felt-made works of art by Canadian artist Andrea Graham
Andrea Graham is an eclectic Canadian textile artist, already well known by the international audience. Her works cannot be linked to the traditional quilt typology, but they reflect the result of an ongoing research for markedly personal techniques, forms and structures. The works on display at Verona Tessile 2015 grow from the artist’s reflection on the meaning of ‘journey’ and on the value conferred by distance to the memory of what we call “home”.
Signs and memories decant during the day, but they live as if under our skin to find a sudden and final meaning at the time of separation and absence. Then, memories take flesh in textile sculptures, monuments uniquely associated to places and people, sounds and smells, one-time and meaningful recollections of our past building up the present moment.
Technical Partner: DHG
WHERE: Ex Chiesa di San Pietro in Monastero, Via Garibaldi 3
strati – LAYERS & Sabrina Bottura
Contemporary works of art by Sheila Rocchegiani and Pietrina Atzori
Sabrina Bottura’s Jewelry
strati – LAYERS is not a premeditated project, but rather the spontaneous manifestation of something which simply happens. The meeting between two artists who — each through her own research — find themselves a heartbeat away, smelling and recognizing each other amid layers of similarities and differences, in an intimate contact that permeates the tangible distance filling it with silent words. Born from different goals, the two textile art pieces displayed here occupy their shared space with a knowing look, recognizing each other as naturally tied around the common theme of layering. This is a theme that Pietrina Atzori covers with patience and tact realizing a kimono inspired by the tradition of Japanese ‘boros’, where layers are scrap textile materials carefully layered in order to express the harrowing beauty of the humble and the simple. Sheila Rocchegiani meets this theme in the visceral need to look upon what is usually hidden to the eye, even to the point of skinning, where layers are membranes to bare and action is not violent, but rather loving, and tension is restrained and calm.
Sabrina Bottura’s felt manifests itself in small, extremely detailed three-dimensional shapes, unique jewelry that perfectly combine the artist’s two passions: jewelry and felt art. Sabrina began her journey as a goldsmith, but soon became passionate about textiles—felt, in particular—whose ductility allows her to express herself in a creative way. Particular attention has been given to color, the result of strictly natural dyeing techniques.
The exhibit will showcase some of her latest jewelry.
WHERE: Former Church of San Pietro in Monastero, Via Garibaldi 3
Shapes, lines and more
Contemporary quilts created by European students of Nancy Crow
For 30 years, Nancy Crow, one of America’s most famous quilters, has been hosting labs and workshops where she creates quilts as an art form, comparable to modern paintings, so much so that some of her creations are on display in museums of contemporary art. The 2011 Edition of Verona Tessile featured a selection of her works that was received with great interest for her use of color on a large scale.
This year’s exhibit presents several works by European textile artists, students of Nancy Crow, who have attended her labs on the subject of “Art and Design”.
During these seminars, students improvise drafts on a large “design panel”, intuitively and directly, using scraps of hand-cut fabric. For any artist, the challenge is found in the independent composition of shapes, colors and proportions. The combined action of colors and shapes—as well as of background figures—is here especially relevant and it lends tone to the work. The detailed machine-quilting enlivens and completes each panel.
Featured artists: Brigitte Amann; Sabine Bärtsch-Schnyder; Sabine Bärtsch-Schnyder; Jutta Dr. Böhmler-Hahn; Ruth Bosshardt-Rohrbach; Ramona Conconi; Regula Emmenegger; Jennifer Harper; Lilian Heer; Michele Samter; Annette Tatchen; Erica Waaser
WHERE: Former Church of San Pietro Martire (San Giorgetto), Piazza Sant’Anastasia
Paths Through Traditional Patchwork
Works by the association La Zampa dell’Orso, Udine
The association “La Zampa dell’Orso” was created in Udine in 1996, bringing together a group of friends sharing a passion for patchwork. Their name, in fact, recalls one of quilting’s most typical patterns, BEAR’S PAW, a representation of the hand that creates through sewing. The Association’s peculiarity is the excellent quality of their works, all of them traditionally designed, where creativity meets a technical perfection of absolute beauty.
WHERE: Civic Library, Via Cappello 43
Talking Silk
Silk prints from the Civic Library
Much as it is quite rare, silk print is a craft documented since the sixteenth Century and used for predominantly religious themes. Verona’s Civic Library has about thirty of these pieces, realized on high-quality silk during the period between mid-eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. The collection consists mainly of poems and other texts written for religious settlements, monastic vows or secular celebrations. This is a unique opportunity to admire a one-of-a-kind typographic collection.
WHERE: Civic Library, Via Cappello 43
Between Ancient and Modern
Works by the association Ad Maiora, Verona
A look inside the busy workshop of Ad Maiora, organizing Association of Verona Tessile. The exhibit presents a variety of textile works ranging from samplers made by new association members, who may be facing the world of quilting for the first time, to tougher works that are the result of years of experience and sharing.
A series of shapes, traditional and non-traditional patterns, old techniques and modern creations, all of this aimed at gaining a better understanding of the many facets of patchwork.
WHERE: Unicredit Art Gallery, Via Garibaldi 1
Colori diVini
Works from the International Textile Art Contest
Each edition of Verona Tessile features an International Contest whose title, this year, is Colori diVini. Suggestions of forms and colors associated with wine—a typical product that makes Verona proud, as well as an international showcase thanks to Vinitaly, an event which gathers the best of the world’s winemaking. The contest, then, aims to interpret this theme—ripe with emotional and sensory insights—through textile art. The works of art, created with any given patchwork technique, present the structural features of a quilt. The contest selection, closed on February 28, saw participants from all over the world.
WHERE: Palazzo dei Mutilati, Via dei Mutilati 8
The Music of My Life
Collective Exhibition of Italian and foreign female artists, curated by Quilt Italia with the collaboration of the Monza Municipality and CADOM
Different music have marked the time of our lives, for each of us. From lullabies to rock, from pop songs to opera, notes emphasize and remind, even when life becomes withdrawn in a music-less drama.
49 Italian and foreign female artists, thanks to the collaboration with Quilt Italia, the Councilor’s Office for Equal Opportunities of the Monza Municipality and CADOM (Help Center for Battered Women) have transferred on textiles their own music, their own feelings, their own memories in this especially powerful and moving exhibit.
WHERE: Palazzo dei Mutilati, Via dei Mutilati 8
The Sign of Infinity
Silk and Textile Art Museum, Carmelitani Scalzi, Adro (BS)
The “Marta Pozzobon in Girotto” Museum traces back its origins to the enthusiasm of a Carmelitan Priest—Father Mansueto—who journeyed through the memory of old crafts, focusing on the breeding of silkworms, an engaging activity for the whole family, which for nearly two months made its home available to the precious silkworm.
Those who visit the exhibition can appreciate the tools and utensils functional to the breeding and nurturing of the silkworm; also on display are tools used in spinning mills fueled by direct fire, as well as in the more technologically advanced ones that developed in the second half of the nineteenth century and then on to the stowing of fabrics ready for twisting and then for weaving.
Bearing witness of women’s savoir-faire, sometimes accompanied by the silence of prayer as well as by the clamor of bustling life in our farmsteads, the exhibit displays precious artifacts made with silk on silk, sacred vestments and small accessories associated with the humble life of a long-vanished world, though well-preserved in the human soul’s memory as a timeless, thin thread, the same thread that the silkworm creates moving its body, tracing the sign of infinity.
WHERE: Carmelitani Scalzi Monastery, Vicolo Carmelitani Scalzi 13
The Travels of the Magic Balloon
Colors of wine
Works by the children of the Uberti schools (Verona)
In the world of Verona Tessile there’s room even for little artists. The Travels of the Magic Balloon is the result of a collaborative project between Ad Maiora and a Primary School in Verona. Fifth grade children, assisted by one of Ad Maiora’s members and by their main teacher, have attended a lab creating a series of panel on a specific subject. The first one was inspired by EXPO 2015 and by the subject of food; the second one was based on the title of Verona Tessile’s International Contest, DiWine Colors.
The works are realized using scrap materials, such as old sheets or broken umbrellas’ cloth. Furthermore, these young artists have created two stories to illustrate the designated topic. In particular, these labs have allowed the vital integration of children with disabilities, this being the main goal of the whole project.
WHERE: Loggia Vecchia, Piazza dei Signori