Community Cloth | Culture Cloth

McNichols Building

Civic Center Park, 144 W. Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO 80202

September 15, 2023-January 14, 2024

Curated by Shanna Shelby; Culture Cloth co-curated with Paul Ramsey

Admission: Free

Review by Gina Pugliese

Located on the second floor of the historic McNichols Building in downtown Denver, Community Cloth, a contemporary exhibition of textile, fiber, and fashion design art curated by Shanna Shelby, invites viewers to engage with “tangible” and “tactile” art forms. As the introductory title card in the exhibition states: “While a sculptor creates in a very tactile manner, a viewer of the final artwork is not typically expected to handle the sculpture. Fiber art, on the other hand, is best experienced not only through sight but also through contact; fabric, rugs, clothing, and upholstery are meant to be touched as well as seen.”

An installation of the group exhibition *Community Cloth* at the McNichols Building in downtown Denver. Image by *DARIA*.

Wanting to distinguish and elevate fiber art in relation to sculpture and other better-recognized fine art forms, the exhibition starts on ponderous ground, leaving participants wondering which specific characteristic or element renders fiber art unique.

Two works by Victoria Villasana, left: *Metamorphosis*, 2022, yarn on canvas print of vintage photograph; right: *Red Panther, Cheyenne Scott, Distinguished Warrior*, 2023, yarn on canvas print of Latin A. Huffman’s photograph from 1879. Image by *DARIA*.

The notion that textiles are particularly meant for “handling” falls short when observing the pieces in the exhibition, which are displayed as paintings, installations, sculptures, and museum artifacts—indubitable art objects never to be worn or tampered with. For instance, the exhibition includes works by Victoria Villasana, “a textile, installation, and street artist” born in Guadalajara, Mexico whose black-and-white prints of popular culture images on canvas she overlays with intricate and vivid embroidery. [1] Her work simulates contact with a subject by costuming images of models with her designs, paying homage to traditional Mexican textile production alongside en vogue fashion trends without faithfully reproducing either.

A detail view of Victoria Villasana’s *Purple Haze*, 2020, yarn on canvas print of vintage photograph. Image by *DARIA*.

As Villasana discusses the materiality of her chosen medium on her website, she observes, “I feel textiles are a tactile, comforting element in our psyche, from the pieces made by ancient cultures to the blankets our grandmothers used to make.” In this way, rather than producing artworks meant to be touched, the medium invokes psychic touch through a multi-generational memory of protection and care expressed through cloaking others in fabric. [2]

Liv Aanrud, *Whirl Girl*, 2022, tufted yarn on monkscloth. Image by *DARIA*.

Similarly, Liv Aanrud’s scenes in tufted yarn feel very painterly. Aanrud calls her work “soft sculptural drawing[s]” of women-centered allegories. Growing up in Wisconsin and receiving her MFA in painting from Rutgers University, Aanrud, in parallel to Villasana, found grandmotherly textile inspiration from a rag rug her own grandmother made in the 1940s. Pivoting to textiles in her art-making practice, Aanrud taught herself a rug hooking technique. [3]

Liv Aanrud, *Mirror Mirror*, 2020, flannel and burlap. Image by *DARIA*.

For Aanrud, using tactile textiles allows her to experiment with time, rather than touch, as she seeks relief from our fast-paced contemporary world marked by harrowing capitalistic components. “My textiles are an earnest attempt to slow time, to hold fast in a world that seems built to commodify and consume,” Aanrud writes on her website, further explaining, “This meticulous labor is a necessary retreat, a coping mechanism in a world that simply cannot be kept up with.” [4] Thus, while a history of women weavers inspires Aanrud’s creative labor, the touch she memorializes is less tangible, confused by an abstract desire to be left behind in a bygone era. Aanrud also raises the question: How might we wrap ourselves up in languorousness, finding unhurried creativity?

Rachael Wellisch, *Enfolded Landscape #2*, 2023, digital print of indigo-dyed, salvaged textiles. Image by *DARIA*.

Following the thematic throughline of tactual fabric arts, Australian artist Rachael Wellisch imparts that her preference for the medium stems from textiles' historical role in shaping how we see ourselves, participate in social rituals, and thereby feel safeguarded under this armor that harmonizes the tension between social inclusion and self-determination. She states in an interview: “[I]ntimacy and tactility [make textiles] a super engaging medium . . . we are literally wrapped in textiles our whole lives as clothing, comfort, protection, and identity, and they’re present through so many rituals of everyday life such as dining, sleeping, love, sex, and death.” [5]

Rachael Wellisch, *Softest hard #2*, 2022, handmade paper, from indigo-dyed salvaged textiles. Image courtesy of the artist.

Wellisch’s hand-dyed, salvaged textiles in natural indigo stand out for their sculptural quality. They also betray an overt environmental and social-political agenda. Wellisch explains in the same interview: “The work . . . draws on indigo’s long history of connecting humans with [the] environment through cultivation and production of indigo plants, as well as its complex associations with globalization, slave trade, and industrialization.” Upcycling discarded fabric in an age of disposable fashion, Wellisch creatively reimagines our relationship to and engagement with textiles—something that might gain value and permanence through art instead of satisfying a capricious penchant for stylish, personal attire.

Dante Biss-Grayson, *Red Dress* from the Sky-Eagle Collection. Image by *DARIA*.

A detail view of Rachael Levine’s *Isla Button Down Duster*, Shibori-dyed silk chiffon. Image by *DARIA*.

On the other hand, presenting fashion itself as art, Dante Biss-Grayson and Rachael Levine remind viewers that socially- and environmentally-minded fashion designers also see their work as wearable art. Headless mannequins model dresses from Biss-Grayson’s Sky-Eagle Collection, a brand named after his daughter, which focuses on his Osage cultural roots. [6] For her brand, ARAE, Denver-based Levine works with Shibori fabric—an ancient Japanese fabric-dying technique related to indigo dyeing that aligns with Levine’s mission to create zero-waste designs. [7]

Melanie Walker, *Ghost Forest*, 2020, installation of dye sublimation on fabric. Image by *DARIA*.

Melanie Walker’s photographic installation more ambiguously positions itself in this overlap between untouchable textile art and wearable art. A photography and mixed-media artist based in Boulder, Colorado, Walker explains her underlying motivation for emphasizing immersion and interaction through her installations:

“Growing up around photography, it was an immersive experience. It wasn’t just one picture on a wall but rather how the images conversed, how they interrelated. Also, I was born visually impaired. I have been legally blind in my left eye since birth and have experienced double vision constantly whenever I am awake. [The] more recent installations I am working [on] with transparent layers in space [attempt] to allow others to perhaps experience things the way that I do.” [8]

Walker therefore creates enveloping photography-based work to access or approximate a visual experience through the palpable sensation of touch, which she achieves through fabric.

A detail view of Melanie Walker’s *Ghost Forest*, 2020, installation of dye sublimation on fabric. Image by *DARIA*.

While the introductory title card to Community Cloth isn’t wrong in its assertion that textiles engage the sense of touch in a way that other art forms do not, it superficially probes the significance of the medium, neglecting the interesting intimacies textiles build with temporality, identity, social-political history, and the environment. Even as the featured artists thoughtfully engage with these dynamic, conceptual dimensions of their craft, the organization of and information offered in the exhibition makes the viewer responsible for drawing meaningful connections between everything displayed. Indeed, since the title cards for the artists supply a list of institutional affiliations and accomplishments, withholding any underpinning theoretical considerations, the viewer must conduct extensive research to unearth the profound meditations on form and content embedded in each piece.

A Turkish sheep-skin coat and rugs in the *Community Cloth* exhibition at the McNichols Building. Image by *DARIA*.

Moving clockwise around the exhibition, I ended my sojourn with a confusing confrontation with woven floor rugs without title cards and a Turkish sheep-skin coat. Presumably excess from the sister exhibition upstairs, Culture Cloth, these global textiles from Asia, Africa, and South America and spanning the twentieth century, were co-curated by Shelby and Paul Ramsey, a textile specialist and co-owner of Shaver-Ramsey, a premier rug store in Denver since 1976.

Paul Ramsey’s *Marbled Media I*, 2023, marbled paper and silk, in the *Community Cloth* exhibition. Image by *DARIA*.

Moving through Culture Cloth, I thought again about the introductory statement to Community Cloth, and how handling might be code for owning. These “cloths'' fuel the imagination and desire to wear the art or display it in one’s home. In this case, it is not enough to see something without possessing it.

A view of the entryway in the *Culture Cloth* exhibition at the McNichols Building. Image by *DARIA*.

By the end of my visit, I found the fabric arts notably designated through a compelling melding of sight, touch, and time. Collectively, these cloth exhibitions want visitors to connect the two shows, as clumsily suggested by antique rugs mingling with contemporary art. Additionally, the “community” and “culture” aspects of the exhibitions want us to recognize how fabric art, textiles, and clothing suture affinity and cross-cultural interdependence.

An installation view of the *Culture Cloth* exhibition at the McNichols Building. Image by *DARIA*.

However, while the common thread of thread links these various twentieth- and twenty-first-century artworks, the exhibitions’ deeper interrelations and overarching thesis remain frustratingly threadbare. Certainly, interesting motifs and ruminating artists abound in Culture Cloth and Community Cloth, but viewers must weave those threads together for themselves.

Gina Pugliese (she/her) was born in New Mexico but raised in Wyoming. After an academic tenure in New England, she cut hair in Denver for five years. Although transient and seeking equilibrium between Wyoming summers and New Mexico winters, she frequents Denver to write about its superlative art scene.

[1] Victoria Villasana, "Bio,"https://victoriavillasana.com/bio/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Voyage LA, "Meet Liv Aanrud," Local Stories, https://voyagela.com/interview/meet-liv-aanrud/.

[4] Liv Aanrud, "About," https://www.livaanrud.com/about.

[5] "Rachael Wellisch: Salvaged Textiles – In Indigo," TextileArtist, https://www.textileartist.org/rachael-wellisch-salvaged-textiles-in-indigo/.

[6] For more information, visit https://www.skyeaglecollection.com/about.

[7] See https://shoutoutcolorado.com/meet-rachael-levine-fashion-designer-and-artist/.

[8] From Catalyst Interviews, "Melanie Walker (w/ intro to Todd Walker)," https://www.catalystinterviews.com/interviews/2019/3/13/melanie-walker.