If We Asked About The Sky, 2020
Damask tablecloth, ink, hair embroidery
60 x 108 inches, unframed
Scribble, 2017
Cloth, hair, thread
11.5 x 55.5 x 2 inches
Proper Behaviors, 2017
Cloth, hair, thread
12.5 x 59.5 x 2 inches
Draw Out (orange), 2017
Cloth, hair, thread
10.25 x 54.5 x 2 inches
Pick-up stripe with silver, 2011
Glass, thread
3.75 x 15.875 x 10.875 inches
Pick-up stripe with pink, 2011
Glass and thread
3.25 x 15 x 11.375 inches
Tensile Drawing No. 4, 2011
Thread
7.375 x 24.25 x 1.5 inches
signed verso
Dispersions (no. 4), 2013
Thread, hair, cloth, white steel frame
23.25 x 23.25 x 1.5 inches
Dispersions (no. 8), 2013
Thread, hair, cloth, white steel frame
25.25 x 25.25 x 1.5 inches
Dispersions (no. 26), 2013
Thread, hair, cloth, white steel frame
25.25 x 25.25 x 1.5 inches
Detail
Dispersions (no. 17), 2013
Thread, hair, cloth, white steel frame
20.625 x 20.625 x 1.5 inches
Traces, 1990
Stitched construction: abaca, acrylic paint on linen fiber
110 x 87 x 6 inches
Mourning Cloth (drape), 1992-93
Hair, thread, reconstructed cloth
72 x 32 x 2 inches
Practice (no. 2), 2017
Text and textile
17.125 x 20 x .25 inches
text: 17.125 x 12.125 x .25 inches
label: 4.75 x 5.5 inches
Anne Wilson's (b. Detroit) multi-media art practice addresses issues of history, memory, and domestic and social ritual. Trained in an interdisciplinary fiber context and influenced by feminism and postminimalism in the 1970s, Wilson asserts the relevance of fiber and textile materials in a contemporary, conceptual art practice. She has expanded her practice into installation, social practice, and performance during the past decade. For Local Industry at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Wilson brought together 2,100 volunteers and 79 experienced weavers to create a community weaving. Wilson earned a BFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and an MFA at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. She also attended the University of Michigan’s School of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Wilson’s artwork embraces conceptual strategies and handwork using everyday materials like table linen, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread, glass, and wire. Recent group and solo exhibitions include FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2018); Pathmakers, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2015); Thread Lines (performance commission), The Drawing Center, New York (2014); Fiber: Sculpture 1960-Present, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts (2014); The Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Hangzhou, China (2013); Cotton: Global Threads, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England (2012); Local Industry (2011) and Wind/Rewind/Weave (2010) at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas (2010); and Out of the Ordinary, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England (2007-08), among others. Her work is found in permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, Foundation Toms Pauli, Lausanne, Switzerland, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. She is a Professor in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Davis Street Drawing Room is Anne Wilson's new experimental and public facing art project. Textile parts, excavations from years of Wilson’s art-making, form an archive displayed over multiple horizontal surfaces and walls in her studio (now drawing room) in Evanston, Illinois. The organization of lace fragments, linens, worn cloth, and glass bobbins is based on textile properties: rolls, stacks, layers, piles, balls, and cones. This art project transforms Wilson’s studio into a site for close observation.
THREE EDUCATORS TO BE AWARDED FOR THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO CONTEMPORARY CRAFT AT THIS YEAR'S SPRING CRAFT WEEKEND
Recent recording of Anne Wilson's Artist Talk with Nneka Kai, moderated by Senior Curator Francine Weiss of The Newport Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibition “Hair Stories.”
This writing attempts to build a commentary of contrasts. I have based my thoughts about If We Asked about the Sky on memories of work I saw during a pre-pandemic studio visit, coupled more recently with hearing Anne Wilson’s reflection of her physical and emotional experience of the exhibition.
Grounded in a textile language, Anne Wilson’s work embraces conceptual strategies and handwork using everyday materials — table linen, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread, glass and wire. In this virtual talk, she will present the evolution of concepts, exploring themes of time, loss, labor and collaboration, and the intersection of material drawing, installation, video and performance. Included in the lecture will be images from her most recent solo exhibition at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, Anne Wilson: If We Asked about the Sky; the museum factory and live collaborative performance Local Industry at the Knoxville Museum of Art; and Wilson’s thread-walking performance To Cross (Walking New York) at The Drawing Center in New York City.
Caroline Kipp, Curator of Contemporary Art at The Textile Museum in Washington D.C., speaks with Anne Wilson about art and life during quarantine. Anne discusses conceptual and material processes behind recent work prepared for her exhibition, If We Asked About the Sky, which will be held at Rhona Hoffman Gallery once restrictions are lifted:
"The work proposes both smallness and vastness, and inhabits a space of contemplation between the mortal world and a celestial universe that is infinite and unknowable. With the proliferation of media images of death, destruction, and injustice that constantly surround us, this work is a meditationon living in and through loss. How does one recognize and respect a life? What is the space between living and dying? Can a drop of blood be placed in a galaxy beyond the trauma of mortality?"
Interview with Anne Wilson in light of the release of the publication Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art.
Review of a hand well trained at Rhona Hoffman Gallery by Susan Snodgrass.
Review of Wind/Rewind/Weave at Knoxville Museum of Art.
Review of Thread Lines at The Drawing Center, New York.
Review of Thread Lines at The Drawing Center, New York.
Review of Dispersions at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
Review of Portable City, Notations, Wind-Up at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
This writing attempts to build a commentary of contrasts. I have based my thoughts about If We Asked about the Sky on memories of work I saw during a pre-pandemic studio visit, coupled more recently with hearing Anne Wilson’s reflection of her physical and emotional experience of the exhibition.
