A Forest of Signs: Josephine Stealey, Sun Smith-Foret, Ann Coddington and The Craft and Art of the Cedarhurst Basketeers are two separate, but theme-related exhibits opening soon at the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts.
Both exhibits emphasize the tradition and innovation of basketry in the United States. Each artist or group represents an aesthetic influenced directly or indirectly by basketry. The eight (local) Cedarhurst Basketeers celebrate tradition but expand it with new ideas.
NBO members Sun Smith-Foret using natural materials—branches, twine, minerals— creates objects that reimagine past archetypes that suggest the continuing influence of long-forgotten rituals; Ann Coddington starting with the body as referent presents hermetic forms knotted in traditional techniques that ultimately suggest a collective unconscious, and Josephine Stealey, inspired by traditional basketry and the vessel, moves beyond those forms using natural materials and handmade papers to create modern tabernacles, reliquaries, and books that reexamine age-old tensions while offering to ameliorate the same between nature and culture.
Josephine Stealey, Sun Smith-Foret, and Ann Coddington will all give gallery talks on opening night, Saturday, October 19, 2019, 6pm. start.
The exhibition opens on October 19 and runs through December 29, 2019. More at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts