Contemporary Tapestry Weaving

Swedish
Ceramic sculptures

Educated in ceramic art and sculpture at the famous art school, Capellagården, located on the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea, Ms. Österlind had her big break-through about eight years ago at her very first exhibit in 2001 when she gained instant recognition for her sculptured women and ravens. Her sculptured women are luxuriant and radiate warmth and confidence. The forms are simple and elegant and serenade the joy of life; a woman lifting a small child up in the air, a woman reading a book, a woman sitting on the window sill kicking her legs or a woman just throwing her arms up in the air to express her happiness. The ravens express the typical curiosity of the species and they are executed in the same fashion as the women, round in form, expressing tremendous humor and yet so well thought through in the design process; each sculpture has its own personality.

Visit the Artist’s website at www.ateljeannika.se. Read about the other artists involved in this summer’s show, Absolut Art, at the Gallery by the River.

German
Textile appliqué

Ms. van Wynsberghe’s artistic education started at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt/M, Germany where she studied painting under Professor Ferdinand Lammeyer. Her great interest in languages led to the combination of text and images. Words are an integral part of the design but they are applied with a quizzical humor that raises prickly questions in the viewer’s mind and give her work its unsettling undercurrent.

As her work matured, Ms. van Wynsberghe was invited to teach her appliqué techniques at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Antwerp, Belgium and in 1973 she had the opportunity to move to Divonne-les-Bains near Geneva. For the next 15 years, she was able to focus entirely on her textile work supported by a Swiss TV program and numerous exhibitions in France and Switzerland. It was during this period, because of the international nature of the community around Geneva, that a world-wide interest in her textile pictures began to develop.

Over the years, Ms. van Wynsberghe has had 15 one-woman shows in Sweden, Switzerland and France and participated in many group shows.

Visit the Artist’s website at www.stines.se. Read about the other artists involved in this summer’s show, Absolut Art, at the Gallery by the River.

Swedish
Knitted sculptures and wall-hangings

With a degree in fashion design, Ms. Rosengren started out designing and making knitted garments in wool and linen. Later on her craft of knitted textile art took a dramatic turn as she began to explore textile pictures and knitted sculptures and wall-hangings. As with her garments, Ms. Rosengren incorporates traditional imagery from old weavings of Southern Sweden with her own contemporary designs. The dramatic tension between the old and the new and the sharp colors against a solid background, brings tremendous life to her vessels and wall-hangings. Ms. Rosengren has exhibited in many galleries in Sweden and abroad; this will be her second exhibit in the US.

Visit the Artist’s website at www.kerstinrosengren.se. Read about the other artists involved in this summer’s show, Absolut Art, at the Gallery by the River.