Arts

Material Spaces at the Elaine Jacob Gallery

There’s a beautiful fiber art show currently on view at Wayne State University’s Elaine L. Jacob Gallery in Midtown. “Material Spaces: Veneration Through the Needle’s Eye” includes work by three nationally recognized fiber artists: Carolyn Kallenborn, Beili Liu and Tom Lundberg. Kallenborn and Liu created two stunning, complementary installations that occupy the gallery’s second floor, while Lundberg’s intimate embroideries fill the walls of the first. All three artists crafted sensitive, resonant works worth your attention.

Lundberg’s intricate, small-scale pieces include objects identifiable as patches, pockets, shoe insoles, even a sleep mask. Some depict scenes that suggest larger narratives; others are curiously fixated on everyday objects. Their vibrant colors and bold geometry are complicated, at times, by a sense of quietude and loneliness. All of them are richly textured, occupying a middle space between two and three dimensionality. They invite close inspection and reward an attentive gaze.

Upstairs, Liu’s “Bound #2” and Kallenborn’s “Ausencia” (Spanish for “absence”) are both about family and distance, and they are both remarkable. Liu works with fine, delicate red thread and pins, Kallenborn with hand-dyed cotton rope, stones, music, audio narration and text printed on the wall. Both artists are interested in the physical and emotional gulfs that can divide people connected by blood. Anyone who has been separated from loved ones by geography and time will understand their power. Viewers with family in other countries will probably be especially struck by “Ausencia,” which was inspired by the families of Mexican migrants who have completely lost contact with their absent kin.

“Material Spaces” offers metro-Detroiters a glimpse of the incredible variety of work being done today in fiber, an immediate, sensuous medium that, in the hands of artists like these, both enchants the eye and stirs the spirit.

Material Spaces is on view until May 20 at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, located inside Old Main at 480 W. Hancock St., Detroit; 313-993-7813. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday.; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday.