Thursday, September 15, 2011

Marilyn Henrion's 'Soft City'

It's a delight to have come across the Still Point Art Gallery exhibition "Destinations: Famous Places and Intimate Spaces", which features native New Yorker Marilyn Henrion's marvelous Soft City. Henrion's mixed media textile works comprise digitally manipulated photography and inkjet printing on fabric to which the artist has added hand-stitching to produce wonderfully textured, softened facades of New York City. Henrion describes the series, which was the subject of a solo exhibition at Noho Gallery in 2010, as her "personal take on the city." Her renderings, most 50 inches by 40 inches, reveal, she explains, "the beautiful and complex patina" of otherwise "hard, unyielding surfaces" of the urban environment.

Henrion, an award-winning artist, is in the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art, here in Washington, D.C.; she exhibits all over the world. (I'm most familiar with her hand-pieced art quilts, which are remarkable for their exquisite color and overall design. See, for example, her series Disturbances. ) In December, Henrion's work will appear in "Crossing Lines: The Many Faces of Fiber" at Three World Financial Center (American Express Tower) in New York City; that group show will be on view through February 19, 2012.

A slideshow of works from Henrion's Soft City series may be viewed in the Noho Galllery video below. The exhibit at Still Point, in Brunswick, Maine, continues through November 15. Selections from the show, which includes fine art photographer Ekaterina Bykhovskaya and 38 other artists, may be viewed online (click individual images to enlarge).



Marilyn Henrion and Ed McCormack, Soft City, 2010 (54-Page, Full-Color Catalogue) 

Still Point Art Gallery Blog Feature on Henrion (This post shows images of several of Henrion's studies; each is 8 inches by 10 inches and also hand-quilted. The studies are available for purchase.)

Still Point Art Gallery on FaceBook and Twitter

Marilyn Henrion at NoHo Gallery (Henrion also exhibited there her series Noise and Disturbances.)

2 comments:

Louise Gallagher said...

Love the textures of her work!

And I am amazed how popular quilting is becoming again -- and by how intricate and beautiful some quilts are!

S. Etole said...

Ekaterina's photography is akin to falling into a dream.