Fab Fiber at the Vargas Galley

Come out to the Vargas Gallery in the Gillmor Center from January 14 to February 21. An opening reception is Tuesday, January 15 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

To see Gallery Open Hours click here.

Dotti Cichon of California USA,  Eszter Bornemisza of Budapest Hungary & Anitta Toivio of Sahalahti Finland use the medium of fiber to express themselves through their art.  

Eszter's magnificent works are laboriously made with discarded newspaper, paint and thread and map places and ideas.   

Anitta Toivio paints "Emotional Portraits" on fabric using her healing hands and intuition to guide her to reveal the soul of her models.  

Anitta Toivio and Dotti Cichon have been collaborating on video installation projects together for almost 10 years.  The projects always incorporate fiber in some way.  The work in this show is titled "Weaving a Tangled Web" and is meant to be meditative and open to viewers' interpretation.

Dotti Cichon uses found and discarded fiber materials for her artwork.  Many times, her work uses gold, silver and copper leaf to enhance the perceived value of discarded materials that have been transformed into works of art instead of finding their way into the landfill.    

She also re-purposes Tyvek house wrap into meaningful art.  Her work "Loss" in this exhibit is of an apricot tree that has lost all its leaves and its blossoms that can be seen on the ground below her tree.  Silicon Valley once was known for its acres and acres of orchards of apricot and cherry trees, but they have all been lost to high-tech industry, factories, office buildings, homes, shopping centers, freeways and roads.  Her work expresses this "loss" of the Silicon Valley of a former time. 

Dotti is also a photographer and has been experimenting with ways to combine photography and fiber.  An image of a flower printed on 2 layers of translucent silk is shown here for the first time anywhere as an experimental prototype for a conceptual show she is preparing about how species of plants are becoming extinct at an alarming rate and pointing out our need to do something to prevent this from continuing.  Printing very thin images of endangered species on translucent silk is meant to express  that these flowers are in danger of fading away.  The image is hard to discern when seen from an angle and viewers must look at the image straight on to enable the image to be seen as a flower.  Conceptually, this is meant to mean that the issue needs to be confronted head-on and if we do so, we can see the flower appear expressing hope for the future.