Customer Reviews

Material Difference: Soft Sculpture and Wall Works

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This book is published by the Friends of Fiber Art International, and is a catalogue for two exhibitions. I haven't found any link between Friends of Fiber Art and the textile art magazine Fiber Arts, with its associated series of annual Fiberarts Design Books, however they are very similar both visually and in tone. This is the first in a series called "Living with Art", and the book features some interior shots showing how collectors place textile arts within a domestic environment. This covers only 12 pages from a 96 page book, whereas from the description on Amazon I expected it would be a greater proportion of the book. I actually didn't like most of the collectors' interiors shown, and they only confirmed to me that it is very difficult to effectively display textile art at home: quite the opposite of what they intended, I'm sure.

The part of the book I liked the best was Polly Ullrich's short essay discussing the place of textiles within the art world. This is thoughtful and informative, and fully footnoted for further reading. The majority of the book is photographs of individual textile-based art works. I found the layout of these images very crowded and this was what I thought let the book down. Most of the images are overlapping, and the rest abut. There are usually three images per page, sometimes two or four, and only a few single-image pages. I didn't like the way the art works all jostle each other. Nothing gets a chance to breathe and be appreciated; it is always visually competing with its neighbor. I love the works of Katherine Crone and Anne Wilson, however the photos in this book gave no sense of the beauty of their pieces. I can understand that this was done so that as many artists as possible could be included in the book, however it makes it very apparent that it is a catalogue, to remind you of what you have already seen in person, and not an art book, designed to make you fall in love with an artist's work. If you are familiar with a Fiberarts Design Book, then the layout looks very, very similar, only slightly more cluttered.

There is a huge variety of fiber art represented. About the half of the works have only details for artist, title, date, and media, and half have perhaps another line giving a short detail about some aspect of its making.

Overall I was disappointed. I'm still looking for a book on textile art that is luscious and rich, rather than conversational and cluttered. If this book was a house it would be one where the good-natured and friendly owner had to move a pile of clean laundry and lift a cat off a chair to find you a place to sit down; nice to visit from time to time, but not gorgeous or inspiring.