Cynthia Schira

Last updated

Cynthia Schira (born 1934 [1] ) is an American textile artist and former university professor. Her work is represented in the collections of many major public museums.

Contents

Early life and education

Schira was born Cynthia Jones in June 1934 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. [1] [2] She was the daughter of a manager at the Corn Exchange Bank in New York City. [2] The family lived in Bronxville, New York until his death when Cynthia was nine, after which they moved to be near her mother's family in Pittsfield. [2] When Schira told her mother she intended to go to art school, her mother sent her to Norman Rockwell—who lived in nearby Stockbridge at the time—to talk her out of the idea. [2] Instead, Rockwell encouraged her to do what she wanted. [2]

In 1952, Schira entered Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island with scholarships from the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Metallurgical Society of New York, and Textron among others, including one that stipulated that she major in textiles. [2] She graduated from RISD with a bachelor's degree in 1956. [1] From 1956 to 1957, she studied in Aubusson, France at L'Ecole D'Art Decoratif. [1] [3] She also studied printed textiles for a time in Baroda, India. [3] She earned an MFA in weaving from the University of Kansas in 1967. [1] [3] Her masters' thesis focused on Peruvian textiles. [3]

Career

In her early career, Schira experimented with ikat weaving and with incorporating strips of aluminum into the warp of her works. [4] In the 1970s, she began incorporating pre-dyed tapes and rayon ribbon into her work. [4] In her body of work titled Supplementary Weft, she inserts narrow strips of cloth such as bandages and ribbons into the structure of the weaving to create depth and color. In a later series titled Complementary Warps, she used a complicated triple weave with three weaves and one weft. [5] Schira's art combines traditional and modern influences. Though she uses non-traditional materials, she works in "the traditional technique of flat tapestry hanging". [4] Schira's work also draws from the various textile traditions she has seen on her travels around the world. [4] [6] [7] According to the American Craft Council, "[s]he established a modern context for weaving while staying true to traditions and maintaining a provocative physicality." [6]

She was an early adopter of computer weaving programs and the Jacquard loom, and her recent work has often referenced the digital world. [6] In 1983 Schira purchased a loom with a 32-harness system and a simple computer using funds from the National Endowment for the Arts Craftsman's Fellowship. In 1994 a software program became available with which she created complex graphic arrangements resembling graffiti and blocks of computer code. While using this technology for ease of execution, she continued to use experimental methods such as painting dye onto her warp threads and adding structural media into her weave. [5]

Schira was on the faculty of the University of Kansas from 1976 to 1999. [8] [9] [10] [11] Her textiles have been inspired by the landscape of the Kansas plains, as well as training and experience in textiles centers around the world. [12]

Personal life

Schira was married for 52 years to Richard Schira, a professor emeritus of art at the University of Kansas, who died in 2008. [9] The couple had two children. [9] Schira lives and works in Westport, New York.

Awards

(All award information from the ACC Library artist file)

Collections

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anni Albers</span> German-American textile artist (1899–1994)

Anni Albers was a German textile artist and printmaker credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft and art.

Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lenore Tawney</span> American artist

Lenore Tawney was an American artist working in fiber art, collage, assemblage, and drawing. She is considered to be a groundbreaking artist for the elevation of craft processes to fine art status, two communities which were previously mutually exclusive. Tawney was born and raised in an Irish-American family in Lorain, Ohio near Cleveland and later moved to Chicago to start her career. In the 1940's and 50's, she studied art at several different institutions and perfected her craft as a weaver. In 1957, she moved to New York where she maintained a highly successful career into the 1960's. In the 1970's Tawney focused increasingly on her spirituality, but continued to make work until her death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Walker Phillips</span> American textile artist (1923–2007)

Mary Walker Phillips, was an American textile artist, author and educator. She revolutionized the craft of hand knitting by exploring knitting as an independent art form. Her hand-knit tapestries and other creative pieces are exhibited in museums in the U.S. and Europe. She was honored as a fellow by the American Craft Council (ACC) in 1978.

Arline Fisch is an American artist and educator. She is known for her work as a metalsmith and jeweler, pioneering the use of textile processes from crochet, knitting, plaiting, and weaving in her work in metal. She developed groundbreaking techniques for incorporating metal wire and other materials into her jewelry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Lee Hu</span> American artist, goldsmith and educator

Mary Lee Hu is an American artist, goldsmith, and college level educator known for using textile techniques to create intricate woven wire jewelry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Wilson (artist)</span> American visual artist (born 1949)

Anne Wilson is a Chicago-based visual artist. Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, photography, performance, and DVD stop motion animations employing table linens, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread and wire. Her work extends the traditional processes of fiber art to other media. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Liebes</span> American textile designer and weaver

Dorothy Wright Liebes was an American textile designer and weaver renowned for her innovative, custom-designed modern fabrics for architects and interior designers. She was known as "the mother of modern weaving".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonya Clark</span> American visual artist

Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trude Guermonprez</span>

Trude Guermonprez, born Gertrud Emilie Jalowetz, was a German]-born American textile artist, designer and educator, known for her tapestry landscapes. Her Bauhaus-influenced disciplined abstraction for hand woven textiles greatly contributed to the American craft and fiber art movements of the 1950s, 60s and even into the 70s, particularly during her tenure at the California College of Arts and Crafts.

Kay Sekimachi is an American fiber artist and weaver, best known for her three-dimensional woven monofilament hangings as well as her intricate baskets and bowls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marianne Strengell</span> Finnish-American textile designer

Marianne Strengell was an influential Finnish-American Modernist textile designer in the twentieth century. Strengell was a professor at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1937 to 1942, and she served as department head from 1942 to 1962. She was able to translate hand-woven patterns for mechanized production, and pioneered the use of synthetic fibers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada</span> Japanese artist (born 1944)

Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is a Japanese textile artist, curator, art historian, scholar, professor, and author. She has received international recognition for her scholarship and expertise in the field of textile art. In 2010, she was named a "Distinguished Craft Educator - Master of Medium" by the James Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian Institution, who stated: "she is single-handedly responsible for introducing the art of Japanese shibori to this country". In 2016 she received the George Hewitt Myers Award for Lifetime Achievement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helena Hernmarck</span> Swedish tapestry artist (born 1941)

Helena Hernmarck is a Swedish tapestry artist who lives and works in the United States. She is best known for her monumental tapestries designed for architectural settings.

Lia Cook is an American fiber artist noted for her work combining weaving with photography, painting, and digital technology. She lives and works in Berkeley, California, and is known for her weavings which expanded the traditional boundaries of textile arts. She has been a professor at California College of the Arts since 1976.

Linda Threadgill is an American artist whose primary emphasis is metalsmithing. Her metal work is inspired by forms of nature and the interpretations she gleans from the intricate patterns it presents. She explores the foundation of nature to allude to nature and transform it into re-imagined, stylized plants forms.

Nell Znamierowski was an American textile artist.

Ethel Stein (1917–2018) was an American textile artist who lived in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. While her work was primarily in weaving, her best known piece is the puppet Lamb Chop.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lili Blumenau</span> American fiber artist

Lili Blumenau (1912–1976) was an American fiber artist. She was a pivotal figure in the development of fiber arts and textile arts, particularly weaving, in the United States during the mid-part of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Zicafoose</span> American textile artist

Mary Zicafoose is an American textile artist, weaver, and teacher who specializes in ikat, an ancient technique in which threads are wrapped, tied and resist-dyed before weaving. Zicafoose is the author of Ikat: The Essential Handbook to Weaving Resist-Dyed Cloth (2020). Her works are part of private and public collections, including at least 16 embassies around the world as part of the U.S. Art in Embassies Program.

Betty Scarpino is an American wood sculptor active in Indianapolis, Indiana. She received the Windgate International Turning Exchange Resident Fellowship two times - once in 1999 and another in 2016 - making her the second person in the residency's history to be chosen twice. In 2020, she was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Member from the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) for her contributions to the advancement of woodturning. Her work is currently in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection and The Center for Art in Wood Museum's collection.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Jules Heller; Nancy G. Heller (2013). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Taylor & Francis. pp. 2526–27. ISBN   978-1-135-63889-4.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Oral history interview with Cynthia Schira, 2001 July 25-26". Archives of American Art . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Museum To Show Wall Hangings, Fiber Sculpture". Iowa City Press-Citizen . June 27, 1973.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Cynthia Schira". Cooper-Hewitt . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  5. 1 2 Koplos, Janet. (2010). Makers : a history of American studio craft . Metcalf, Bruce, 1949-, Center for Craft, Creativity & Design. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp.  356, 469. ISBN   9780807895832. OCLC   658203695.
  6. 1 2 3 "Cynthia Schira". American Craft Council. Archived from the original on 15 October 2013. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  7. ↑ "Cynthia Schira". Smithsonian American Art Museum . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  8. ↑ "Cynthia Schira | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu.
  9. 1 2 3 Renault, Val Alexander (October 23, 1998). "KU design professor to receive career teaching award". University of Kansas. Archived from the original on 22 January 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  10. ↑ https://www.linkedin.com/pub/cynthia-schira/19/841/303 [ self-published source ]
  11. ↑ "Cynthia Schira: Oral History Project" (PDF). KU Retirees' Club. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 January 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  12. ↑ "Cynthia Schira | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved 2016-01-25.
  13. ↑ 1982 NEA Artists Fellowships. American Craft, 42(6), 2-7.
  14. ↑ "American Craft Council College of Fellows | American Craft Council". Archived from the original on 2013-04-30. Retrieved 2014-04-26., American Craft Council website, American Craft Council College of Fellows.
  15. ↑ "American Craft Council Gold Medalists | American Craft Council". Archived from the original on 2014-01-24. Retrieved 2014-10-11., American Craft Council website, American Craft Council Gold Medalists.
  16. ↑ "Textile, 1984". Cooper-Hewitt . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  17. ↑ "Cynthia Schira: Within the Dream". Metropolitan Museum of Art . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  18. ↑ "Reflections by Cynthia Schira". Smithsonian American Art Museum . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  19. ↑ "Lake Summer by Cynthia Schira". Smithsonian American Art Museum . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  20. ↑ "Table/Cloth by Cynthia Schira". Smithsonian American Art Museum . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  21. ↑ "An Errant Line: Ann Hamilton / Cynthia Schira | Exhibitions | Spencer Museum of Art". www.spencerart.ku.edu. Retrieved 2016-01-25.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.