New Exhibition Offers Rare Look at Fiber Arts : Textiles: Many of the weavers, sculptors and others involved in the Artspace show say other Southern California galleries haven’t been receptive.

In some ways, the “FIBERARTS in Southern California” exhibition now at the Artspace Gallery in Woodland Hills is nothing new to the artists involved. Many of these same weavers and sculptors and other artists have seen their works shown across the country. But until now, local fiber artists have been frustrated in their efforts to display their works in Southern California galleries.

It was with that in mind that weaver Cameron Taylor-Brown and curator Scott Canty of the municipal satellite galleries gathered these 18 Southland artists of tapestry, quilting, basketry, felt and paper for a rare local group show. The catalyst for the exhibit was last year’s publication of the “Fiberarts Design Book Four,” the latest in a series of books cataloguing contemporary directions in fiber-based art.

Taylor-Brown, a former teacher at the Philadelphia College of Textiles who now lives in Los Angeles, had seen the book and was immediately intrigued with what other area artists were creating. “I had felt fairly isolated from other artists doing work in the same medium,” she said. “This show was a way for me to make contact with other artists in contemporary fiber in Southern California.”

The Artspace exhibition, which continues through June 13, offers a wide cross-section of styles in fiber art, (although Taylor-Brown says the accepted definition of the genre “changes all the time”). Such materials as paper, felt, cloth or thread are central ingredients in most of the works, whether for an abstract tapestry or a sculpture modeled on ethnic garments.

In many cases, Taylor-Brown added, the artists use “a mixture of techniques and a crossover of boundaries. Most of the work is mixed in its approach. It’s not just weaving, or just embroidery, or just printing, because the artists are more interested in creating some kind of visual statement and are using whatever techniques work for them.”

Many of the artists involved in the Artspace show agreed, however, that local mainstream galleries have not been as open to the art form as some of their counterparts in New York, San Francisco and the Midwest. Even for artist Shelley Socolofsky, whose tapestry classes are among the arts programs at the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in downtown Los Angeles, there has been much resistance to fiber arts. So far, she added, she hasn’t been able to schedule a fiber-arts show at the Otis/Parsons campus gallery.

“They don’t understand it,” Socolofsky said. “They don’t accept it because it’s a craft, perhaps. They have been educated in this system of craft versus art, which is all bogus. But it’s so ingrained now, maybe more so in America than in any other culture.

“I do think it can change, because we are now in this big environmental trend. People want to get their hands into things. There’s this multicultural thing going on. We’re at a point where we can make a change if we keep out there and do more shows.”

Among the diverse works at the Artspace exhibition are the colorful paper-based sculptures of Yael Bentovim and a pair of frenetic collages of fabric by Esther Parkhurst from a series called “Scrap Attack.” And to the gallery’s far rear corner is Genie Shenk’s “Spiral Ring,” an 11-foot-wide ring-shaped sculpture that spirals in opposite directions and back into itself.

“To me, it’s not the medium that’s the issue; it’s what you do with it,” said Maribeth Baloga, a Van Nuys artist included in the show. “In the book some of the work doesn’t rise above craft, and some of it does. It’s the same thing as painting. There are Sunday painters, and there are others who do more with it than that.”

Much of fiber art shares traditions that go back thousands of years and a freedom from the need for high technology. The sculptures of Carolyn Prince Batchelor are based on traditional ethnic garments. And even Shenk’s streamlined sculpture was constructed solely from 3,000 sheets of heavy paperboard.

“That’s one of the joys of working with fiber,” Taylor-Brown said. “It’s a very humble material, and yet you’re making a lot of very complex things from a material that is basically also in sheets and towels.”

Many of the artists, she added, make pointed references to traditional folk art and “are very aware of the historical precedents. They draw on that rich heritage and find it nurturing.”

While weaving her own abstract works, Taylor-Brown added, she consciously acknowledges the long history behind them. “I find that very connecting and very exciting,” she said.

“FIBERARTS in Southern California,” a group art exhibition, continues through June 13 at the Artspace Gallery, 21800 Oxnard St., in Woodland Hills. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays. Admission is free. For more information, call (818) 716-2786.

Appleford is a regular contributor to The Times.