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Brattleboro-West Arts/Vermont Crafts Council Open Studio Tour

By naomilin on July 8, 2016 in

When:

October 1, 2016 @ 10:00 am – October 2, 2016 @ 5:00 pm

2016-10-01T10:00:00-04:00

2016-10-02T17:00:00-04:00

Where:

The studio of Naomi Lindenfeld
330 Meadowbrook Rd
Brattleboro, VT 05301
USA

Cost:

Free

Contact:

Naomi Lindenfeld

Come see where I make my colored clay pieces and maybe even watch me make one! There is nothing like going into a studio to see the tools, methods, environment in which the creative process happens. And you can see the finished results right on the display shelves above my wheel. Just around the corner of my studio will be a display of seconds and clearance pieces with marked down prices.

Once again, a group of us Brattleboro-West Arts members are offering our tour in the West Brattleboro and Marlboro area in conjunction with the statewide Vermont Crafts Council Tour. It is also part of the “American Craft Week” festivities that the state of Vermont is the host of this year.

Bratt_VCC evite fall 2016

demo'ing at BWA Open Studio Tour 2014

Colored Clay Workshop

Brattleboro-West Arts Holiday Show and Sale

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EVENTS

Artist Statement

I grew up with my mother's loom in our family's living room. Not many years later I ended up with clay carving tools and a rolling pin in my own ceramics studio. The pairings of work in this show exemplify the influences of my mother's work on me and have served as an opportunity to both grow creatively and to honor my mother and her life's work.

Lore Kadden Lindenfeld (1921 - 2010) emigrated from Germany to the U.S. in the late 1930s. She attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the 1940s and was a student of both Josef and Anni Albers. Inspired by the Alberses and the Bauhaus school tradition, she worked as a textile designer for the New York fashion industry followed by a career as a weaver, fiber collage artist and as a weaving and art history teacher on the college level.

I grew up hearing riveting stories of Black Mountain College, its avant-garde, experimental environment and brilliant, unique personalities. As well, I was exposed to many artists and craftspeople during my childhood and took my first pottery class with a friend of my mother's. I responded to the immediacy of clay more than what appeared to be the tedium of threading warps on a loom.

While working on a degree in ceramics from Boston University's Program in Artisanry, I discovered the Japanese technique, Nerikomi, of layering colored clays to create patterns. I have been captivated by exploring many ways of working with colored clay ever since. I have also come to realize that my method of working with clay - the sense of movement, abstract graphic quality, nature-themed imagery and vivid color - echoes my mother's textiles. In designing work for this show, I was first more drawn to my mother's fiber collage work than her weavings, as a closer match for my own techniques and sensibilities. I later saw that the way I carve into the layers in two directions appear as woven fabric.

It was both fascinating and challenging to interpret a two-dimensional medium within a three-dimensional realm; to not just reproduce my mother's ideas and imagery but to draw inspiration and design the pieces as my own. My hope is that my ceramics, while paying homage to my mother, stand on their own just as her fiber works do.