What is fiber art? (We in Australia spell it as fibre) . It’s art made of textiles. Since the beginning of weaving textiles they have been used to create patterns. You might consider that art, it is in fact art. But over the past century a movement of artists steered away from traditional textiles prints and began to explore the medium in three dimensions, in textures and colours, weaves and patterns from a wide and varied range of techniques including knitting, embroidery, tapestry, felting and more.
What these techniques and mediums in fibre create is also wide an varied. From wall mounted tapestries to sculptures made of fibre, it is a unique world that steps away from most other means of creating art. Sometimes messages are embroidered or printed onto mediums, sometimes woven. Sometimes the form is an abstract expression of a shape or object conjured by the artist.
You may have seen our Instagram post from just after Christmas where I explored the winter exhibition in Lake Como, or perhaps you then saw my visit to the Palazzo Mocinego in Venice or to the home of Mimmo Totaro, one of the founding fathers of fibre art in Europe.
And the reason I mention all of this is because there is an exhibition currently running until September 3rd in Como. It once again explores artists from Asia, Africa and Europe across a broad variety of expressions in fibre art. By all accounts it is an interesting exhibition.
Exhibition: Lake Como, Via Odelscachi – runs until September 3rd
You can read more about the exhibition here.