Ailsa O’Connor
Ailsa O’Connor linked her art to society, both the themes she developed in her art and in the essays she wrote to explain the role of art in society.
Category Archives: Visual Art
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Frances Varos Graves
Graves excelled at embroidering colchas with birds, animals, flowers, and other whimsical images. Her favorite subjects, however, were Catholic saints borrowed from religious paintings called retablos and three-dimensional sculptures called bultos.
Yang Fang Nhu
In 1978, Fang Nhu and her husband were forced to leave Laos, their livelihood threatened by the Communist regime. In Providence, Fang Nhu became active in the immigrant Hmong community and was eager to teach her weaving skills to her daughter-in-law Ia-Moua Yang. For Fang Nhu, weaving was not just making cloth, but was representative of a social fabric.
Yvonne Walker Keshick
A basket maker and porcupine quillworker, Yvonne Walker Keshick creates birchbark masterpieces realistically decorated with quills that depict natural images as well as cultural symbols of the Odawa tribe. Also a devoted teacher, she has developed resources and provided instruction to ensure this art form is passed down to others as it was to her.
Genevieve Mougin
Lebanese-American lace maker
Genoveva Castellanoz
Castellanoz became an important figure among Mexican Americans in a wide area because she made paper and wax flowers for baptisms, weddings and quinceañeras.
Georgeann Robinson
Robinson and her two sisters, Genevieve Tomey and Louise Red Corn, began to produce the old design of Osage ribbonwork, a form of needlework that they had learned from tribal elders. Soon they were researching additional designs, digging into neighbors’ trunks, and traveling to distant museums. In time, their trademark, “Ribbonwork a Specialty,” attracted customers nationwide.
Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim
Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim is an embroiderer whose journey as an artist started in her birthplace of Safad.
Em Bun
Em Bun was born January 1, 1916, in a small village in southern Cambodia. Her maternal ancestors had always been considered the village weavers. As a child, she watched her grandmother and mother weaving. Em Bun learned to weave from her mother when she was about 10 years old. She also learned to process the silk from cocoons raised on the family’s farmland.
In 1979, Em Bun, along with her four daughters and two sons, fled Cambodia because of the communist takeover. They escaped to refugee camps in Thailand, and finally arrived in the United States on June 4, 1981. They settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, because one of her sons was already living there.
In the United States, it was difficult for Em Bun to continue her prestigious work as weaver, farmer, and merchant. The language barrier inhibited her ability to make new friends, and she lapsed into isolation and depression. Then a group of Pennsylvania women provided her with a loom and weaving materials. Em Bun was truly happy for the first time in nine years, according to her children.
Subsequently, Em Bun was recognized as a master weaver by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Grants from the council encouraged her daughters to study their mother’s art. All her family members now wear Em Bun’s bright pure silk hand-woven sarong skirts to Cambodian weddings and celebrations. Cambodians up and down the East Coast have placed their own orders for the two-meter lengths of silk. Em Bun uses leftover silk from a tie factory in central Pennsylvania, anointing the materials as she weaves with tapioca and coconut oil to provide the unparalleled luster and sheen of true Cambodian silk.
The subtlety of a master Cambodian weaver is expressed in the basic decisions of which colors enhance others. Although Em Bun’s work appears to be mostly solid colors, close examination reveals that the warp threads differ from the weft threads that cross, producing unusual and shimmering hues. Em Bun’s exquisite and sensitive work has helped her continue to serve as the village weaver, though her village is now nationwide. In addition to her children, she has taught others her art. She has given demonstrations at the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and in her own community. She has helped fellow Cambodian immigrants maintain contact with their heritage and has been a catalyst for the preservation of Cambodian traditional arts in the United States.
Esther Littlefield
Through the years, Littlefield applied the skills she learned as a child to make traditional Native costumes and other regalia. She adapted new materials and designs while maintaining the traditional Native art style. In making button robes, for example, she used wool blankets, felt beads, and buttons, sewn onto the blanket in a detailed design.