Wk 12 — Artist OTW — Heather Anacker & Krista Feld
Artist: Heather Anacker and Krista Feld
Media: fiber and textile art
Website: http://kristafeldartist.blogspot.com
Instagram: N/A
Heather Anacker and Krista Feld are a collaborative group of artists at CSULB. They created their BFA thesis exhibition, Dwelling, in the Gatov Gallery West and Gatov Gallery East located at the School of Art (SOA). Their work explores weaving, sewing, and dying different fibers to create pieces that people use in their daily lives.
Anacker and Feld create work that uses colors you see in normal furniture like gray and brown. The shape of each finished piece either uses lines or curves depending on the purpose of each created art. For example, the replacement for a bed was a square while the chair formed the shape of a half-circle. The dyes came from different objects that typically get thrown out. For example, some came from the sawdust from wood pieces while others came from food like purple cabbage. They also had different clothing pieces like shoes and a working apron hung up. These pieces were all big enough to see when standing near it.
These different art pieces had the intention of showing the tools they used to create the end product. For the dyes, they wanted to see if there is another purpose than throwing it away so they tested to see if there is a color in the wood. By coloring the textile material, they were able to create pieces that can replace the use of normal furniture and make it more travel friendly. They also wanted to remove the line formed from the industrial age and create clothing pieces from a sewing machine or sewing kit and used knots to create some other projects.
After seeing this exhibition, I never really considered fiber and textile creations as art. Seeing the skills Anacker and Feld used to create these pieces helped me understand how much broader art really is. This exhibition was eye-opening because I did not realize how the daily objects we use can be created using your hands. It also helped me learn that there are not a lot of objects you need to live life.
