Once you’ve seen the work of Weston artist Leslie Giuliani, it’s difficult to stop thinking about the vibrant colors, hypnotic implied narratives, and intricacies of a process that wraps in monotype, painting, embroidery and more. In viewing pieces like “Traveler” and “World of Wonders,” anchored by often amusing, sometimes darker, cartoonish and anthropomorphic figures, it’s fun to imagine the story behind Giuliani’s lexicon of symbols, abstract shapes, glyphs, and primitive characters.

Giuliani has upped the interpretation ante by embracing more abstract shapes in her newest mixed media works like “It Works!” and “Phantasm.” But perhaps the real puzzle for the uninitiated is this: What kind of artist is Giuliani? Printmaker, painter, weaver, rug hooker?

Genre-hopping like the best artistic polymaths, Giuliani is all of the above, often in a single composition—and while her works can look a bit folksy and homespun, looks deceive. Giuliani passionately embraces digital age technology throughout her process.

Her embroidered encaustic paintings combine encaustic (hot wax) painting, digital machine embroidery, and printmaking processes that include monotypes and silkscreen—all of it on Encaustiflex, a cross between paper and fabric. The images begin as drawings, which are turned into stitch files on her computer. Sent to a sophisticated computerized sewing machine, they are then stitched directly onto the encaustic paintings and prints. The embroidery files are infinitely repeatable and color choices even trickle down to thread choice.

Giuliani assembles a corps of painted, printed, and stitched pieces, and then choreographs them into a final composition, not unlike quilting. “Nothing is pre-planned,” says the artist, who continues to work on a series  in a 20-by-16 inch format.

Lever (2017), 16” X 20”, sewn encaustic monotype

“I got an iPad and I’m working with one of these new [design] programs. It’s really fun to work with geometrics,” Giuliani says of the new shape-making magic. “These new works are more taking monotypes and using decorative stitching as line elements as I sew them together.”

Giuliani, who has been influenced by Louise Bourgeois’ textile works, Philip Guston’s cartoon imagery, and Byzantine icon paintings, has also been weaving lately, and has been rug hooking for 20 years. She’s the one who taught New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast how to hook. They’ve become close friends and will be exhibiting together in June at the Guilford Arts Center.

“The hooking I did mostly when my daughter was growing up,” Giuliani says of the intensive process. “I really don’t have time to do them without a commission.”

It Works! (2017), 6” X 20”, sewn encaustic monotype

Notable past commissions include five rugs she hooked for Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and his wife, model and actress. Patti Hansen. “They live in town. They’re wonderful people,” says Giuliani, who met the couple through their designer and worked for them for six or seven years, repairing all the textiles in their house as well as hooking rugs for the couple.

Giuliani’s work will be in a group show opening Jan. 18 at the Walter Wickiser Gallery in Chelsea, and she’s also in the Some Like It Hot: Works In Encaustic exhibit opening Jan. 13 at the Rye Arts Center in Rye, New York.

Leslie Giuliani
Weston, Connecticut
Website

Top image: Detail from “World of Wonders” (cropped), (2016) 45”x 32”
Sewn and Embroidered Encaustic Painting. All photos courtesy of Leslie Giuliani.

The post Leslie Giuliani: Genre-Defying Art appeared first on Take Magazine.

At 200,000 square feet, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (aka MassMoCA) has always been large. But now, thanks to the renovation of Building 6 on the campus, MassMoCA has effectively doubled its space—and its opportunities—for ground-breaking exhibits and relationships with artists. The additional 130,000 square foot expansion opens to the public May 28 with a variety of events, many of them free to North Adams residents.

MassMoCA’s expansion means more than “simply” additional gallery space or even extending relationships with artists such as Jenny Holzer. The improvements to performance space and amenities—updated green rooms and catering services for performing artists, as well as additional bathrooms for concert-goers—mean that MassMoCA now can offer top-of-the-line experiences for all. “We’ve upped our game with the ability to host performing artists,” says MassMoCA Director Joe Thompson. “It’s been a little rough around the edges up until now.”

Laurie Anderson, photo by Leland Brewster

The expansion also adds more workshops so that various artists can work on site in addition to showing their finished work. The museum has created, as part of this renovation, multi-year relationships with artists such as Laurie Anderson and James Turrell. Visitors can see works in progress in artists’ workshops, and the artists will perform or show works as often as once a year as part of this new arrangement.

James Turrell, Breathing Light, 2013, LED light into space, dimensions variable, photo by Floriann Holzerr

Look for exhibition space that is more hands-on. A gallery devoted to Gunnar Schonbeck, for instance, will invite viewers to make their own music. A firm believer that every object has its own inherent musicality and that each human is a musician at heart, the exhibit will feature many of the instruments he and Bennington College students created—all of them open for touching and playing. A gallery near Laurie Anderson’s workshop, meanwhile, will take viewers on a virtual reality tour as they walk into a space onto which she has painted every available surface with words and images.

August Solid Sound by Rick Levinson

The renovation has a practical side: it makes it easier to circulate between exhibits because it joins together buildings that were previously separated. “If all else goes to hell in a handbasket,” Thompson jokes of the new four-mile circumference—an intern actually clocked it with a pedometer—”we can open a health club.”

But the expansion goes beyond the MassMoCA campus itself, a critical part of the mission, according to Thompson. Expanding MassMoCA is just another step toward helping the entire Berkshire region. Located at the base of Mount Greylock, MassMoCA is a linchpin in a series of bike paths and hiking trails in the area. That’s one reason why—wait for it—a bike path will go through the middle of MassMoCA to more easily connect the other bike paths once they are finished. “It will be a microcosm of the best of New England,” Thompson says of the final development. “It could be one of the really wonderful attractions to this area.”

Joe Thompson–Director
MassMoCA
1040 MassMoCA Way
North Adams, Massachusetts
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Top image by Douglas Mason

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