Keep an Eye on the Bowl:
The Art of Joan Schulze
OCTOBER 7 - DECEMBER 30, 2021
Ruth’s Table gallery is pleased to present Keep an Eye on the Bowl, a solo exhibition with a mixed-media quilt, collage, and fiber artist Joan Schulze.
As a contemporary artist, Schulze bridges abstraction and minimalism, fine arts and crafts, East and West. Named a “pioneer of the art quilt movement,” Schulze has revolutionized the field of fiber arts with new quilting forms and techniques, embrace of digital tools and processes within the traditional craft form, and non-conventional visual language fused with her poetic verses, modern art, and broad cultural influences from around the world.
The title of the exhibition, Keep an Eye on the Bowl, is a reference to Schulze’s ongoing series of works inspired by an antique tea bowl gifted to Schulze during one of her visits to China. This exhibition brings together twenty-two works from 2002 to 2021 that represent Schulze’s pursuit of the possibilities of quilting and collage through experimentation, with the tea bowl theme as a continuous thread that ties them together.
ONLINE VIEWING ROOM →
Explore the exhibition online
EXHIBITION PREVIEW
“I see these drawings as lines of poetry. Each line supports the other.
When all the stanzas are finished the drawing asserts itself.”
ARTIST STATEMENT | Poetic roaming
In China, my work has been called “poetic roaming”. After my 2016 exhibition in Shenzhen, China I received a gift that redirected my work for the next three years. Another pathway was forged. Poetry ties it all together.
Life is one big collage in the making. Events are layered without a plan. One can sense that the universe is in charge. The same feeling pervades the studio atmosphere. Life is sliced and diced with abandon until order needs to happen. My collage aesthetic and love of poetry encourages happenings where the end is never the end and can be a beginning.
Work done under this edict/umbrella/method is varied in mood, execution and format. I invite you to wander through this offering, sense the intangible history where events or outcomes lead to the previously unknowable.
I have pulled into the mix work from as early as 2002 with most created in 2017. The theme the tea bowl links this selection of twenty-one artworks and many were inspired by my personal collection. In sharp contrast, several monumental hangings rely on improvisational packing tape collages and drawings. Imperfection is valued in all my work as shown in the details. In many instances imperfection has been elevated to be the subject itself.
Joan Schulze
EVENTS
Opening Reception: Keep an Eye on the Bowl
Thursday, October 7 | 6-8pm PT
Onsite, Ruth’s Table Gallery
Meet the Artist: Joan Schulze
First and Third Fridays in Nov-Dec | 3-5pm PT
Onsite, Ruth’s Table Gallery
Slow Looking: Keep an Eye on the Bowl
Thursday, December 2 | 1-2pm PT
Onsite, Ruth’s Table Gallery