TIPO DE ENTRADA

As a Danish sculptor based in Pennsylvania, Line Bruntse is engaged with the ways in which women artists are subverting the fibre practices that have historically been used to define

and enforce gender roles. Using structure, form, and non-traditional materials, Bruntse subverts these fibre practices in a way that goes beyond aesthetic, technical, and design-based decisions.

Bruntse is known for valuing the relationship between her audience and her artwork. As Bruntse declares: “I really want my work to touch people, not just be beautiful to look at, so they can get some of that story that inspired the work but with their own information plugged in” (May, 2014, p. 89).

While I am drawn to the various ways in which Bruntse subverts historically feminine creative practices, I am moved by the attention and agency she gives to her audience in the final product of her work – this helps to transition the art from object to intervention. While Bruntse works in various mediums and forms, I am particularly drawn to her various large-scale installations that play with the scale and form of the textiles, which at times are juxtaposed against steel structures. Within her various pieces, Bruntse often has her installations interact with elements of architecture – strips of cloth suspended from a quilt-like object in the rafters, or tentacle and appendage-like forms extending off of canvases affixed to walls or cascading out of architectural forms and pooling on the floor (Bruntse, n.d.). As I think through, practice, and make work that largely represents a counter-hegemonic discourse in regard to madness,

femininity, queerness, and other aspects of my privileged and oppressed subjective identities, I am constantly thinking about the audience. Admittedly I more often place my concerns around the accessibility and clarity of my expression, which positions the audience as passive recipients of what I intend to be translated. Bruntse reminds me of the importance of considering the experiences, identities, and realities that an audience inherently brings to their unique

experiences of artwork. Not only does this reposition the value of the audience, but it shifts the

ways in which we evaluate the art as we consider what impact the art has on the audience and what impact the audience has on the art.

As I challenge myself through this thought process in accepting the presence of the audience, I am forced to value the relationship with the audience. Being present with the

inherently varied, complicated, complex, differing positions of the viewer has me thinking of my practice as being more collective in process. What I make does not depend solely on my

experience(s), my perspective(s), and my message. What I make does not have to be limited by perceiving it as a reflection of my engagement with the social world around me. If I intend for others to engage with and respond to what I make, I am beginning to see that I have to take up the audience as a valuable part of my creative process. As I develop the concepts of my work, I am challenged to think about the audience as having an integral role within a working

relationship.

3.7 LJ Roberts

As a fibre artist I have often struggled with positioning myself between the world of art and craft. At policy, societal, and institutional levels, artists and craftspeople are often forced into boxes that define fine art and craft practices as dichotomous. One of the reasons that I struggle with this is because I find the distinctions between the two to be problematic.⁴ However, there are examples of creative practices where makers are both subverting these categories and

refusing to allow the designations to boundary their creative processes. For me, LJ Roberts is an

4The social and historical trajectory of the development of art versus the development of craft as creative practice is a topic that is beyond the scope of this artistic audit. See, for instance:

Buszek, M.E. (2011). Extra/Ordinary:Craft and Contemporary Art. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

example of how creative work that is exhibited in galleries and other artistic institutions can unsettle these limiting definitions of art and craft.

With a master of fine arts degree and a master of arts in Visual and Critical Studies, LJ Roberts defines their practice thusly:

I approach working in textiles with a political urgency. Activism entwined with critical queer/transgender politics, feminist histories, and the on-going AIDS epidemic deeply drives my work. From the shirts worn during protest marches, to the AIDS quilt, to punk zines and patches, I am interested in materialities that mark political histories. The socio-economic-political and laborial circumstances of textiles, both in concept and material, become the root of re-imagining queer representation and alternative histories. My practice employs a wide spectrum of textile methods positioning highly technical skills alongside amateur techniques to (re)imagine ideas of mastery and utility. Recent works include large scale quilted and knitted installations, single-strand four by six inch embroidered portraits and jacquard-woven banners. (n.d.)

When I think of Roberts’s work I envision hot pink yarn, multicoloured knitting, wire, steel poles, and embroidery. In their pieces Build It Up To Tear It Down and We Couldn’t Get In. We Couldn’t Get Out., Roberts uses crank-knit yarn, wire, and steel poles to construct large-scale

multicoloured and hot pink fence structures – an incredibly striking, repeating yet ever changing motif in their work. In contrast, Roberts recreates activist buttons through embroidery in Portrait of Deb (1988–199?) (Roberts, n.d.). The fluidity between high and low cultural production adds

to Roberts’s work instead of detracting from it. The aesthetic, technical, and design elements of the sculpture and installation are striking and the content explored is thought provoking. Through medium, method, and concept, Roberts combines seemingly opposing elements of simplicity and

complexity. I find this encouraging as it pushes me to continue to evolve in my creative

processes. Often I find the work of having to prove the legitimacy of my “craft” (quilt making) or to fill the requirements to fit into the box of “fine art” can be both exhausting and stifling.

Additionally, I constantly struggle to connect my counter-hegemonic ideas with mainstream audiences. LJ Roberts demonstrates how drawing on skills, techniques, and values from various disciplines can help to enhance and open up practice-based boundaries.