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San Francisco Chronicle
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco gallery offers meditative escape through woven textile landscapes
Talk about art can often resemble the way people talk about wine — jargon-heavy, pretentious, a swirl of adjectives attributed to nebulous concepts that obscure rather than clarify. But just as you can enjoy a glass of wine without visiting a vineyard to learn about terroir, you can appreciate Margo Wolowiec's newest textile works without parsing lofty descriptions. My advice: don't overthink it and drink up the art. 'Margo Wolowiec: Midnight Sun,' the Detroit artist's third solo show at Jessica Silverman, fills the San Francisco gallery with 12 woven circular textile landscapes. Several horizontal strips of juxtaposed images of landscapes, flowers and insects make up each composition. The effect is similar to a photomontage, though the technique is more tactile. To create these image-based textiles, Wolowiec begins by printing a digital photograph onto loose threads combed out horizontally. Using a sublimation dye process, the ink bonds to the fibers and stains the polyester threads. Wolowiec then rotates the threads so the printed side is visible and weaves them by hand on a loom. During weaving, Wolowiec can manipulate the image to distort it for an effect that renders the images slightly hazy, like glimpses of memories you can't quite piece together. 'I wanted this show to be so very meditative,' Wolowiec told the Chronicle, explaining she chose imagery of parts of the natural world 'that need conservation or are vulnerable or changing due to climate change or human intervention.' Though a few people at the gallery use the word 'portals' to describe Wolowiec's works, it's really the surface that captures your attention. Woven and textured, the textiles suggest running your hands over them. The vertical undyed warp threads are visibly white, standing out in contrast with the printed digital image. There are also Japanese silver-leafed threads and crinkly mylar emergency blankets, sourced from disaster preparedness kits, that catch the light in a way that creates an unphotographable shimmer. Her works aren't openings to an alternate planet; they're invitations to stay present here. As a metaphor for a world Wolowiec sees as interconnected, her medium of weaving is unparalleled. Wolowiec, born in Detroit in 1985, earned a BFA in 2007 from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. In 2013, she earned an MFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, through which she met gallery owner Jessica Silverman, also an alumna of the school. Silverman sees the work as originating in the artist's interest in environment, changing landscape and the 'degradation of and catastrophic kind of pollution in certain areas of the world.' She emphasized, however, that 'this show is not starting from a negative place.' 'It's more about ecological renewal,' Silverman explained, noting the use of silver and indigo, antimicrobial materials, refer to healing. The phrase 'Midnight Sun' comes from the arctic phenomenon also known as polar day, when the sun neither sets nor rises but appears to move across the sky horizontally. In the show's title piece, the natural event is visualized by six suns that dot the middle of three landscape strips. The top portion features a larger incandescent sun setting, while below is a snowy mountainscape. This is Wolowiec's first show entirely of round works. Because looms typically produce rectangular weavings, her larger 80-inch pieces feature a vertical seam — a result of her loom's width which limits how wide each section can be woven. Kathryn Wade, senior director at Jessica Silverman, sees the circular format as symbolic of natural cycles: the earth, the moon, the sun, seeds. The show's description, written by Sarah Thornton (a writer married to Silverman), links the circles to the Italian Renaissance tondo, a round format not traditionally used for landscapes. But Wolowiec offers a more personal meaning; she sees the circle related to birth and 'a lack of a beginning and an end.'
Chicago Tribune
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Elmhurst Art Museum highlights permanent collection in new exhibit
It started in 1981 with a group of teachers, artists and other art lovers who wanted to share that love with a wider audience. And the Elmhurst Art Museum has been gathering an impressive collection of artwork ever since. 'In the beginning, a lot of the local artists and people in the Elmhurst Artists' Guild and local collectors donated their collections to start the collection,' said Allison Peters Quinn, the museum's executive director and chief curator. A little over 10 years later, they had enough clout and resources to acquire the Mies van der Rohe-designed McCormick House, built in 1952. It was purchased in 1992 by a group led by artist and educator Eleanor King Hookham and moved to the Elmhurst Art Museum Campus. 'That set us on the path of art, architecture and education,' Quinn explained. Through Aug. 17, the museum is staging an exhibition of items from its permanent collection called, 'Legacies: Selections from the Elmhurst Art Museum Permanent Collection.' The focus of the show is on collecting and collections. 'We wanted to show how collections work,' Quinn said. 'Who gives and how.' Initially, the plan for the museum was to exhibit and collect works of local artists, but that focus soon expanded. The museum now has a permanent collection of around 1,000 works by a diverse assortment of creators. 'It's a collection that is focused on 20th century art and design by Midwestern artists,' Quinn said. She noted that pieces have been donated to the museum in a variety of ways. 'It could be a family member, it could be the artists themselves, it could be their friends who pulled together their resources to make sure that story is told by a museum,' Quinn explained. One interesting item in the collection, Quinn indicated, is the Barcelona Chair, attributed to Mies van der Rohe. 'It was designed actually by a designer, Lily Wright, that he worked with but it was always attributed to Mies van der Rohe, as happened with women artists in the '50s,' Quinn said. Although the primary focus era of the museum's collection is midcentury modern, Quinn reported, because of the way the museum was started, they do have pieces as old as the 1800s. 'We're telling the story of midcentury modern and contemporary because that's what the charter of the institution is now,' Quinn explained. 'When it started, it was a little bit more nebulous.' One valuable item in the collection is a large painting by Michelle Grabner, who taught at the School of the Art Institute for a long time and had solo shows in important institutions. Another interesting work that Quinn cited is 'Circus Wagon' by Joseph Burlini. 'It's this magical metal sculpture, about six feet tall, three by three feet square, but it's circular,' Quinn said. 'It has all these metal parts. When you look at it, it feels like it's moving.' The work was a gift from the Elmhurst Fine Arts and Civic Center Foundation. The museum's current exhibition draws from donations from over 200 collections and donors. It features micro installations of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from over a dozen collections. Works by local, regional, national, and international artists are included. The Elmhurst Art Museum is at 150 S. Cottage Hill Ave. More information is at
Chicago Tribune
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Thar she blows! Chicago artist and writer Dmitry Samarov brings ‘Moby-Dick' back to life
Moby Dick was a whale, a very big whale. It is also a book, a very big book, written by Herman Melville and published in 1851. It was initially a commercial failure, this tale of Captain Ahab on a whaling ship named the Pequod on his mad quest for vengeance on the giant white sperm whale of the title that had chomped off Ahab's leg on a previous encounter. The story's narrator, a seaman along for the journey, opens with what is arguably the most famous first line in English literary history, 'Call me Ishmael.' 'Moby-Dick,' the book, entered the life of artist and writer Dmitry Samarov two decades ago when he was 33. 'I was going through a divorce and came upon a cheap paperback copy of the book,' he says. 'It was a crazy time for me and I was grasping at anything that might help me. This novel was a life raft and I felt lucky to be among the few who had not been assigned to read it in high school, so I wasn't spoiled by having to do it for homework.' And so he was helped and life moved on. But in the days following the bloody events of Nov. 4, 2024, in Gaza that rattled this world, Samarov was particularly affected. He set about trying to 'forget the news.' He canceled his subscriptions to newspapers. Never a tech aficionado, he severed his remaining internet ties so there was 'no headline-blaring app (following) me out the door.' Samarov came to the United States from his native Russia in 1978 when he was 7. He lived first in Boston and then came here. He went to the School of the Art Institute. He started driving a cab. He wrote. He made art. In 2006, he started writing an illustrated blog about his behind-the-wheel experiences. This attracted the folks at the University of Chicago Press, and that led to 'Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab' (2011) and 'Where To? A Hack Memoir' (2014). His next book arrived in 2019, 'Music to My Eyes,' a gathering of drawings and writing handsomely published by the local Tortoise Books. 'For more than 30 years, I have been bringing my sketchbook to concerts and drawing the performers on stage,' he said. I wrote of it: 'His writing has matured over the years and in wonderfully compelling ways his new book can be read as a memoir, for in it he shares stories that help explain why and how music has, as he put it, 'haunted my entire life.'' He lives in Bridgeport and makes his living by working some fill-in bar shifts at the Rainbo Club and a couple of shifts at Tangible Books, near his apartment. 'My life is all freelance and flexible,' he told me some time ago. 'The goal is total unemployment.' Now, on to the latest book, seeded by an article Samarov read about, as he puts it, 'tech hucksters claiming to make millions publishing new versions of classics from the public domain.' He was not at all interested in 'tricking anyone into paying me $15.99 for a cut-and-paste reprint of some dusty tome.' He discovered Project Gutenberg, the internet site that allows people to download books or read them online at no cost. It offers some of the world's great literature, focused on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Near the top of its most-downloaded list, Samarov found his old friend, 'Moby-Dick.' And so he got to work. In his short but lively 'Designers Note' at the book's end, he gives some of the details, and he tells me one of his goals with this project is 'to introduce it to younger people.' He writes that he feels the novel is 'as relevant as any news story.' The book is handsomely published by Samarov's friends at local publisher Maudlin House and is available there and elsewhere for $25, not at all bad for a 650-page book. Melville dedicated 'Moby-Dick' to his great friend, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Samarov dedicates this new edition to Harry Synder, the late manager of a theater in Boston about whom Samarov writes elsewhere, 'Harry and I didn't talk much about art over the 35-plus years of our friendship but he showed me how to carry myself in the world without neurotically making sure anyone who crossed my path knew of my 'true calling.' He was a fully-rounded person first but an artist to the core.' The whale is on the cover of this new edition, striking in black and white, though to me, he appears to be smiling. 'I was inspired by scrimshaw art,' says Samarov, then explaining that art form that is created by engraving or carving on such whale parts as bones and teeth. There are nearly 100 drawings of people, boats, buildings, implements, ropes in knots and other items. There is a Samarov self-portrait and a drawing of Melville, accompanied by Samarov's writing, 'I wonder what (Melville) would make of there now being over 7,000 versions of his masterpiece. … I'd like to believe he'd judge the version you hold in your hands worthwhile and not a cheap cash grab.' Far be it from me to dip into Melville's mind, but I think Samarov's right.
