Tag: beads

Quinci Baker in Title IX at The Hole

Boxers, golfers, tennis champs, martial arts practitioners and more sporting characters dominate the walls of The Hole Gallery’s two-gallery exhibition ‘Title XI,’ a reference to the 1972 government policy that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education.  Over fifty years later, the impact on women and girls has been profound with the gallery citing an expansion from 300,000 girls involved in high school sports to 3 million.  Quinci Baker’s video ‘The Hindrance,’ revisits Venus Williams’ 1999 match in which falling hair beads resulted in a penalty, while Represent (I), crafted from collaged from hair beads, pays homage to the tennis great. (On view through August 27th in Tribeca and the Lower East Side).

Quinci Baker, Represent (I), inkjet collage, pony beads, acrylic on cradled wood panel, 24 x 30 x 2 inches, 2023.

Eva LeWitt at Luhring Augustine Gallery

Using silicone and metal beads, sculptor Eva LeWitt creates a series of hanging spheres in Luhring Augustine’s Chelsea space that shape-shift as light passes through them.  The artist has explained that for her, spheres are ‘a beginning and an end…a period, a punctuation.’  Hung in a ring around the middle of the gallery at varying lengths, they seem gathered as if for conversation or play.  (On view in Chelsea through April 30th).

Eva LeWitt, installation view at Luhring Augustine Gallery, March 2022.

Jordan Nassar at James Cohan Gallery

A rich array of colors make Jordan Nassar’s flame-worked glass bead sculptures at James Cohan Gallery an immediate and present pleasure, yet the experience of dislocation drives these abstracted landscapes.  Raised in the US, the young Palestinian-American artist grew up understanding aspects of his family’s culture at a geographical remove.  Here, he creates points of entry into imagined landscapes through transparent grids of glass beads.  (On view on the Lower East Side through Nov 21st.  Masks and social distancing required.)


Jordan Nassar, Bab Al-Amoud (Gate of The Pillar), hand-flamed glass beads, steel, wire, 12 x 29 x 10 inches, 2020.

Curtis Talwst Santiago at The Drawing Center

Canadian-Trinidadian artist Curtis Talwst Santiago’s invented ancestors are conduits to an inaccessible past, allowing him to imagine the lives of those who came before him.  The fabulously beaded Jab Jab Knight seen here breaks through a wall of netting and stone to dominate Santiago’s recent show at Rachel Uffner Gallery; at the Drawing Center where the artist’s drawings and installations are now on view on-line, Santiago walks visitors through the show, introducing his knights and inspiring consideration of ‘genetic imagination.’

Curtis Talwst Santiago, The Jab Jab Knight, wire and beads, 82 x 24 x 24 inches, 2020.

Liza Lou & makers at #apartogether_art

Liza Lou is no stranger to communal art projects, having run studios in California and South Africa employing dozens of craftspeople to hand-make sheets of beads as seen in this textile piece at Lehmann Maupin Gallery from fall ‘18.  Now isolated in her studio by the pandemic, she’s launched #apartogether_art, an open invitation to the on-line community to take inspiration from childhood security blankets and make textiles using materials at hand.  With hundreds of postings, the project testifies to the ubiquity and diversity of the creative impulse.  (Also accessible via apartogether.com).

Pannus, oil paint on woven glass beads and thread, 89 x 95 x 6 inches (approximately overall), 2018.