Monumental Fiber

Monumental Fiber : Threads Mapping Man, Cities and the Cosmos is the brainchild of Dotti Cichon which features the work of three artists, Eszter Bornemisza (Hungary), Anitta Toivio (Finland) and Dotti Cichon herself (USA). This exhibition incorporates photography, installation, painting and mixed media fiber art to convey altered perceptions of our environments and each other. It’s running at the Vargas Gallery at Mission College from February 18 – March 28. I had the pleasure of catching the opening reception last night.

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Gallery View 2 - photo Marie Cameron

Monumental Fiber : Threads Mapping Man, Cities and the Cosmos – Vargas Gallery

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Green - photo Marie Cameron                                Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Gillmor Center- photo Marie Cameron                               Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Blue- photo Marie Cameron

Mission College’s Gillmor Center, in which the Vargas Gallery is situated, is quite a spectacle at night!

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Dotti Cichon - photo Marie Cameron

I love Cichon’s work! She travels extensively taking architecturally inspired photographs which she then manipulates into kaleidoscopic patterns – printed in this exhibition on silk banners. To me, these pieces transform the familiar into something that seems to reveal the spiritual core of its source material.

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Gallery viewer- photo Marie Cameron

Eszter Bornemeisza, from Budapest, Hungary, works with bits of ephemera to construct labyrinth-like layered maps as a launching point for exploring personal and community narratives. It’s easy to get drawn in to the tactile details, threads and netting, maps and cryptic equations of nuclear physics.

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - detail of Eszter Bornemisza's panels - photo Marie Cameron                  Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Lynne Todaro and Dotti Cichon- photo Marie Cameron               Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Gallery View 1- photo Marie Cameron

Detail from Bornemisza’s layered panels,  Mission College Instructor and Sculptor,  Lynne Todaro and Dotti Cichon, Vargas Gallery

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Emotional Portraits by Anitta Toivio - photo Marie Cameron

Finnish painter, Anitta Toivio paints people not as she sees them but as she senses them, through the energy they emit the memories they hold onto, their auras. Emotional Portraits are spiritual portraits on silk.

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - A and D Projects, collaboration by D Cichon and Anitta Toivo- photo Marie Cameron

The Landscape in Us, a collaboration by Cichon and Toivo are photographs, a Finnish forrest printed on fabric and a video projection of a California seascape video on an overlay of organza, melding two landscapes representative to each of these artists.

Monumental Fiber - Vargas Gallery 2015 - Marie Cameron and Dotti Cichon- photo Lynne Todaro

As you can tell I’m a fan of Cichon’s work, sporting one of her silk scarves, the wearable version of one of the panels in front of which we are standing. Mine is based on graffiti from Florence!