Works by
Sandra Adams
Rachel Aleksander
Lucy Arai
Abbie Chambers
Camilla Clark
Maura Cronin
Barbara Doyle
Jane Dunnewold
Anna Kristina Goransson
Charlotte Hamlin
Sandy Heffernan
Dawne Hoeg
Daryl Lancaster
Adele Mattern
Lorraine McArthur
Kara Muise
Elin Noble
Shara Porter
Carla Pyle
L. Carlene Raper
Barbara Schneider
Johanna Serino
Peggy Sexton
Deniz Shiokawa
Andi Stewart
Marketta Timonen
Susan Troy
Rio Wrenn

September 6 – October 18, 2007

Once long ago when I lived in a daylight world, the world being too much for me, I would have gone to grass. Face downward and very close to the green stems, I became one with the ants and aphids and sow bugs, no longer a colossus. And in a ferocious jungle of grass I found the distraction that meant peace.
John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Who has not been inspired at some point by the patterns, textures, and colors provided so readily in the natural world? We look to lean, strong lines of a bare tree in winter, listen to the harsh tapping sound of a woodpecker outside the window, marvel at the crooked forms of geese flying south for the winter. The natural world provides the creative self with a universe of contrasts: chaos and calm, empty and abundant, singular and repetitious. We relate to the colors, forms, and shapes of nature, as well as to the wellspring of concepts discovered in its happenings.

In association with the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery, the Textile Study Group of New Bedford presents LUSH, an international exhibition of yardage influenced by the infinite microcosms of the natural world. Works have been chosen which adhere to the feeling Steinbeck describes in the above quote in which an artist goes “face downward … no longer a colossus,” in order to explore the intricacies of our environment.

The Textile Study Group of New Bedford consists of both professional and emerging artists, teachers, designers, community activists, and any lovers of cloth and thread coming together to discuss textiles and to engage ourselves with the possibilities of our materials. We meet monthly to discuss techniques, share stories, critique works, and to provide a support system for one another as artists. Made up primarily of graduates of UMASS Dartmouth’s Textile Department, both at the graduate and undergraduate level, this group has emerged as a way to continue to explore and ask the questions which began in academic setting.