Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls, Montana presents Beyond Intention, an exhibition that brings together the work of three contemporary fiber and mixed-media artists: Maggy Rozycki Hiltner, Ashley V. Blalock, and Jennifer Reifsneider. Nicole Maria Evans, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, explains that Beyond Intention aims to address the concept of “intention” as it relates to the practice of contemporary fiber art-making in women’s lives, and the multivalent qualities of the materials in the face of their utilitarian origins.
The artists present three distinct bodies of work and utilize personal topics of inquiry to further the discussion. Jennifer Reifsneider explores the gap between knowledge and experience. The convergence of the domestic and the mathematical inspire her work. For Reifsneider, modest functions of Victorian flourishes have a unique capacity to model fractal growth and non-Euclidean hyperbolic space — the space of outer space.
Maggy Rozycki Hiltner presents a cast of embroidered characters. She uses the familiarity of stitching along with seemingly lighthearted designs to convey more serious subject matter. Very rarely is anything quite what it seems.
Ashley V. Blalock creates larger-than-life site-responsive crochet installations tied to gallery walls that overtake the viewer. Blalock’s installations confront compulsion to control or influence a perceived outward appearance in the domestic life and hint at the unease that exists below the surface of women’s assumed position in the domestic environment.
Materials, process, and narrative form part of the visual conversation as they repurpose, reuse, and redirect meaning. Works shown utilize established techniques like crochet, needlepoint, quilting, knot tying, and pattern making, but re-imagine their purpose and use by transforming them into artworks that go beyond traditional intention.
Beyond Intention is on view through February 11, 2022.
For more information, visit the-square.org.
