Ferne jacobs biography of barack

Each piece, with individual threads forming a cellular structure, is filled with her devoted focus and imbued with intense energy. Her pieces are meditations on the fiber of society and the nature of humanity in the modern world. Click on the catalog to view full screen and zoom options. View the objects in the exhibition below and click on each image for additional information.

Ferne Jacobs, who moved to Los Angeles at an early age, has devoted herself to fiber art since the mids when she took a weaving workshop with the artist Arline Fisch. She received her M. ISBN Nancy Margolis Gallery. Retrieved American Craft Council. Further reading [ edit ]. External links [ edit ]. American Craft Council College of Fellows.

Turner Aileen Osborn Webb. Douglass Morse Howell F. And so I noticed that. And I went to the exhibit. I got to organize some lectures for it, and I remember loving her piece more than any other piece in the exhibition. It was a black cross, and there were like-she did this slit weaving. I mean, she revolutionized weaving. She made her own reed.

She took the top off the reed, and she could move threads in and out, across the reed, so she could group them together and then separate them, and.

Ferne jacobs biography of barack: She was born April

Her work was really extraordinary. So powerful, so varied-use of text. JACOBS: Then she started painting and using paper in them and-well, this black piece-because of the slits, it was a rectangle piece-it was like a cross within a cross within a cross. And then in the center, the cross was just of light. It was so beautiful. JACOBS: There was enough negative space that the light could go through, and so it almost had inner crosses, like light.

I just loved it. So thinking about that, and I read something that she wrote. It was some article in a magazine, in the quotes. I just felt that we had something in common. We shared something. So I decided-I was going to New York. I was teaching at Haystack for the first time. That was the first time I had taught there. I was a scholarship student one more time inand that's when I met Peter.

But I was already doing my three-dimensional fiber. I was his assistant. I was making these baskets for him. Marilyn Pappas was there at the same time. I think I taught him how to make a basket shape, so. So I didn't actually do his weaving. I worked on my work, but I really-I did help the students. So I taught a couple of people how to make basket shapes, and that's when Marilyn and I met, and we became really good friends after that.

And then. RIEDEL: Was it significant for you, Ferne, too-and we'll get back to Lenore-did it make a big difference to you to be invited to teach at Haystack and then also have your work included in that exhibit in Toronto? Were those big signs to you that your work was being accepted, there was a place for what you were doing, people were interested in it, or were you going to do it no matter what?

I mean, listen, even with that kind of recognition, it hasn't been easy. It's always a struggle. So I've done it all these years. I've done it for, what, 35 years, struggling all the way. That was the real breakthrough, because he also curated the Toronto show, at least for Americans. So once he knew about my work and put it in-and really brought it into the museum, you know, in the Contemporary Craft Museum- I've exhibited steadily ever since then.

He was saying that I was one of the Americans to be included in that, and that was-I enjoyed that a lot. I felt very good about it, but the real-the beginning was the Contemporary Craft Museum, and that, I think, was the important show that made my professional career take off, and I've exhibited ever since. A very diversified mix. I've been included in the international shows, especially American shows that toured internationally.

I haven't really-I've been in a few international shows early on. It's funny. I think, for one thing, I'm not on the computer. I don't have a computer, and I think that keeps me from knowing about international shows. And I'm not-it's been pretty much national. I don't like the screen. I don't like the little mouse. I don't like any of it. You know, I think I'd rather do something else with the money.

So coming at-we were talking about Haystack and then this exhibition-because this is sort of the next phase. These are the early '70s. Being at Haystack in '71, I-and then slowly getting to-starting to see things by Lenore-you know, this writing. Too many things had been happening, and I thought it was time. She and Dominic had been my favorite weavers in the '60s.

I had met him, but I had never met her. I still felt a real-more and more-I felt some kind of kinship with her. And I was friends with Francoise Grossen. Do you know who she was? She was in fibers; she's not doing it right now, but she was very good. So I decided to call her up, and sure enough, she was in the phone book. Now, I think-and I don't think she met a lot of people.

Now, why did she decide to meet me? I think she had seen my work in Cleveland. There was a-I don't know if it was an international fiber show or a national fiber show, but she went to see it, and I think she saw my work there and really liked it. So I think she might have remembered my name or for some reason-I don't know if she knew something, but she said, "Come.

I wasn't in New York for very long. I was there by myself. My family was back in L. I was staying in a hotel, and I had an appointment with her-I remember I think it was in the afternoon, and I didn't do anything that day. I stayed in my hotel room because this-it meant a lot to me to meet her, and I was quiet during the day. And then she had a loft at that time on Wooster [Street]-I think I met her when she lived on Wooster, and there was a big Italian fair and it was kind of scary.

The whole thing was pretty scary. I lived in L. I didn't know New York well at all at the time. I mean, I had lived in New York-I had lived in the village. She was so gutsy. She had come to New York and lived at Coenties Slip in the '50s, the late '50s, and that was raunchy. And then ferne jacob biography of barack she was in SoHo, and it was pretty raunchy.

It was still manufacturing mainly, and. And Coenties Slip, there were a lot of artists, but they were living in really primitive conditions, illegal lofts right next to the ocean. Jack Youngerman was there and Ellsworth Kelly and really interesting people there. Agnes Martin. When she was in SoHo, I don't know who was around her then. I don't know who was around her on Wooster, and I think it was a larger area, and I think people were more spread out and there was a lot of manufacturing.

And at night it was really empty and dark and-so I went and there was some-I forgot the saint-there was a fair of some Italian saint. Gene can-I don't know. I'm not Catholic. But I remember having to pass through the fair to go to her place. And so here's-here's my quiet morning. Here's this chaos of this fair, everybody screaming at you to eat something and buy something.

You know, Italians are loud. Everybody was loud. And they all looked like gangsters. I mean, they didn't, but-they were very Italian. Everybody was yelling and. Going to that, to her loft, and then getting to that loft, I didn't know anything about lofts, so I-I ring or whatever. And she is short; she's under five feet. She's under five feet or she's maybe five feet tall.

She-she was like four-something between 4'9" and five feet. So I take the elevator to her loft and it's a-it's not a real elevator. It's a freight elevator. And I get up and I think I have time to collect myself. It opened right into her loft and there was no hallway, no nothing. There-it opens and she's standing there. And I'm catching my breath.

And here's this small person looking at me with the most incredible eyes. I mean, so like lasers looking at my face. And I'm going, oh, my God, you know, here she is. So I walked into the loft. It was one of the most amazing days of my life. I walked in, and it's pretty open. The space is pretty open except the kitchen. The kitchen is kind of marked off and she walks into the kitchen.

I mean, it's open, but the shelving marks it off. But the kitchen is marked off because of the cabinets and everything. And I walked in, and she says, "I want to eat a peach. I'd like to see your loft with you. And so I'll wait; so we sat down across from each other like you and I are and I sat and watched her eat this peach. She never offered me a peach; she didn't offer me anything.

I just sat and watched her eat this peach, and when she was done, we got up and we started walking around her loft looking at her work. We spent hours doing that and talking about her work. JACOBS: We just spent hours, at least three hours, and we finally had to stop because she was involved with meditations-it was Indian meditation and she was leading a meditation-she did have, like, a screened-off area, kind of a curtain, and there was a little altar in there and cushions and she had-she was having people over to meditate.

So when they started coming, it was time for me to leave. So-but otherwise, I might have been there for hours. Because we were slowly moving around the space and we were really talking about-[inaudible]. I was telling her my responses to her work, and she was talking about the work and-so that was the end of that experience with her, and then she had this-the next thing that happened was she had this.

JACOBS: One piece-one piece, she did a collage of-she painted the background in blue, and then she had this box of lines-black lines, and then she had fire coming out of it. And we started talking about the fire and the sky and the blue, and this box of fire. I don't even remember what I said, but I was relating something about the sky and fire, and I-maybe I knew something about that.

I can't remember what I said, but I remember saying something about that. That's the one piece I remember us talking about. There was something about the fire and the sky. Those images would be very familiar to me; so, see, her images were very familiar to me and the ideas in them and somehow my thinking about it. You know, I can't remember-but some connection between the blue and red and the sky, and, now I think of blood and water and air and all these elements coming into being.

RIEDEL: So much of that-so many of those were images that you have worked with for 30 years in the dream journals at one time or another. JACOBS: So her collages in a way were a little like, you know, images that I was familiar with, and so I could talk about them, and I could-and she became interested, because I could really talk about them, and I showed some kind of understanding of the images she was working with, and it became a very dynamic conversation, which has lasted to this day.

It must've been around the time that her exhibition, her retrospective, opened, because parts of that are from the cover. So that must be older now, but clearly that was a postcard she sent you that had nothing written on it. It's all images except for your name and address. RIEDEL: Well, I think it's interesting that you got through high school based on images rather than text, and here you are literally having a conversation through images.

I mean, she is amazing with words. She is 98, and she is still very specific about words, about pronunciation, and she can't see anymore. So our relationship is so much now about words. I read to her, and we have these amazing discussions about poetry and about, oh, philosophical writings and. I mean, he was from like-I don't even know when he wrote.

I think it could be from the s, but we read that-excerpts of that, and it was phenomenal. And I think one thing we have in common, and certainly we-I think we're both very interested in, like, a personal spirituality. So, we've read that, we've read poetry, and we've read her journals. And that's where what-how we got with Jacob Boehme-is that he was quoted in one of her journals, and she happened to have a book of his.

And so I took the book, you know, and we started reading that, but a lot of the time we spend going over her journals and discussing all her quotes, all her thoughts, and have these wonderful conversations about them. Are they image and text, are they diaries-what are they like? She started out-I mean, you know, she worked as a copyreader for a publisher, I think, at one point; when she was young to make some money.

I've learned so much from her. She's introduced me to so many poets and philosophers. But I'm thinking early on-you know, I met her. I mean, I've known her-God, I've known her for about 30 years. But we mentioned she is When I went there, she was 65; I've known her over 30 years, but I didn't meet her probably till she was 65 and I was probably in my early 30s.

She is 60 years older than I am. We can talk very openly with each other; we are very honest with each other and have very deep conversations. Do you have journals-I mean, maybe we should talk about the two different kinds of journals that you've kept for. JACOBS: Well, to finish our talk about her, the next time I saw her-because, you know, I saw her in New York at that time, and then she had an exhibit at Cal State Fullerton, whatever, and it was such a beautiful exhibition, and she came for the opening and she gave a lecture.

And that was the next time I saw her, because I didn't have any relationship with her at that point. And I went with a friend and we-you know, I saw her during the day and we said hello to each other and she was really beautiful. She said to me, "Well, come to my hotel with me. I'm with a friend," and it, oh, it drove me crazy. It broke my heart.

I thought, you know, what am I doing, this is such an opportunity. So I couldn't do it that night, but I went to the opening, and then I went to hear her talk, and she came to me after the talk. She gave a talk on the Great Mother. She thinks that her work comes out of the Great Mother-this idea of a great mother-and then she came up to me and afterwards she said, "I know that you understand my talk.

I didn't even know her well, and that was the beginning of our relationship. She and Dextra Frankel, who curated the show and directed the gallery, a group of them went out for dinner in L. And then Lenore and I talked kind of very personally that night, and that was the beginning of our relationship, and it has continued all these years.

And I talk to her ferne jacob biography of barack I talk to her at least once a month. I'll go whichever direction you want to go. Well, maybe let's go to journals because. And we've been-it's been a wonderful experience over the past couple of ferne jacobs biography of barack. We've gone through them, really, page by page. So, maybe around the same time, and I can't remember when I started-I'd have to look it up.

RIEDEL: Yeah, I do remember him figuring in them from time to time, but extraordinary journals, narrative image journals that you've drawn from early '70s on, at least '71, I think. And then also the collage journals that you keep, and I've just been so struck by that-those two separate series of journals, both individually and what they have to say to each other, because the dream journals feel very narrative and very much about exploration of metaphor and imagery, color, a lot of unconscious images, and then the collage journals feel much more like playing scales.

They feel like compositional exercises and experiences and studies of texture and form and shadow. So with that said, as a description-and then you kept the dream journals a lot longer than the collage journals, is that right? Yeah, they'd be only about three or four years old, I think. And the dream journals are all image, for the most part.

There's a little bit of text occasionally, and then also you said you keep shorthand texts of the dreams-that you do short texts of the. So somebody can, maybe, learn the language from seeing the typed page and the actual written page, but they're a mess. They're a mess, and there's a little drawing in those, too, like sketching things.

So there're like three sets of journals, plus my work-the fiber. RIEDEL: Well, one of the questions that is part of this questionnaire is whether religion or spirituality figures in your work, if it's had impact. And I just-I was thinking about something you just said about Lenore's journals being a very personal spirituality. And I certainly get that from your dream journals.

Do you want to just talk about it a little bit?

Ferne jacobs biography of barack: Jacobs is best known

To me, my journals are just finding my own personal story and not even that I understand it, because they're very mysterious. You know, they're very mysterious to me. I try to listen to these processes that go on in me, and then I just draw these processes, and I don't try to define them. And I think they're very hard to define. And at some point, literally, the Jewish letters started appearing in them.

You know, I was born Jewish-Hebrew letters, and I started following that. So there are crosses in them, there are Jewish stars in them, and suddenly, these letters. So it definitely feels-it definitely feels spiritual to me and has a spiritual component, and it comes out, I think, in the crosses and the Star of David and the Hebrew letters. I think when I saw that, it's very much like a timeless force-an ever-changing timeless force that you might call God.

You know, and because I've gotten involved with the Hebrew letters, just last year I joined a Torah reading group, and I actually have read the Old Testament through once, which is amazing to me. And I don't know, I'm trying to see-I know that the letters have made me think a lot about Judaism, and then reading the Torah has been quite an experience, because it is a dialogue with God.

It's definitely an attempt to have a dialogue between God and human beings, however you define God. The interesting thing to me in my experience of reading the Torah, and maybe even this whole thing with Hebrew-Hebrew was a pictorial language. It's a pictorial language and I made a point not to learn Hebrew but to really be with particular letters, because those were the letters that entered the journals.

And so I stayed with the letters that entered the journals and. Maybe Lenore and I talked about that at the time. One definitely is fire; it's a shin, it's fire, it's a crown, it's a mother. I don't know if she and I maybe talked a little about the Hebrew letters that we could use. The Alef is very important to me, which is the beginning. It is the first letter, but the theme relating to Hebrew.

JACOBS: Alef is the first letter in the alphabet and-but it's always, to me, the beginning-you know, it's the beginning, and in my drawings it's always, to me, the beginning. The learning about the Torah, which is the first five books of Moses in the Old Testament, that God in the Torah is-I'm not sure because I'm just learning, okay, so I'm putting this out.

So when I say timeless forces, or a timeless force, that is a way of saying that. We make God way too specific in our culture, and maybe the beauty of my relationship with Lenore is we talk about the openness of religion and the openness of this idea of God and what it means. So going back to Lenore, you know, just we have that kind of conversation, and my journals incorporate that and work with it, and also, you know, they do other things.

They do some very primitive things and sometimes there are reptiles in the journals. I remember the evolving mandalas. RIEDEL: They were round and then different shapes, so it seems that there are all sorts of images that appear one at a time, and you work through them till you think somehow something is-till you're done,and then something else appears and you move forward with that.

In the Torah-I mean, it's like this continuing thread, right, because I'm just learning this now. This is, like, right now. God in the Torah comes as a natural force. The voice or-not even the voice, because Moses is the only person who ever hears God's voice, but God comes in a cloud during the day and fire at night. I mean, it's amazing. We never think of that, and what if-I mean, I'm talking about ideas, but one thought I have is that, what if nature has consciousness, what if-like human beings have consciousness.

If nature has consciousness, then God can be in that consciousness of nature, of human beings, and all the whole ferne jacob biography of barack of everything, you know. RIEDEL: The tree, the hills, remember how the-some of the hills would start off small, and they'd grow, or there'd be a gap and there may be a bridge between them, but it seems like it was all constantly evolving, and there was an interaction between the characters, whether they were human or fish, I remember, or a bull, the worms.

There would be some sort of interaction between the animate beings, the sentient beings, and the land or their environment. It was very much an interactive experience, as I remember them. And you know, it's so interesting, because I was just talking to somebody about a piece I just finished-you know, a fiber piece called Tides. And I was telling her-you know, these were the collectors who bought the piece-it, to me, is moving earth.

It's like the earth itself is in movement and these tides, these small pieces of blue that go up in the piece, kind of around it, are like these moving bodies of water, how the water moves, and, you know, it takes the shape of the earth. The earth is moving, and then this water and the tides are flowing, so here it is in the fiber, you know, in the work.

RIEDEL: And I was thinking about the differences between the two: one being so columnar and containing and a form that's very specific to the idea of containers; we think of that as sort of a columnar form-and then wind, which is so loopy and moving and so full of motion and twisting, you are hard-pressed to find a right angle in it.

Ferne jacobs biography of barack: When Willocine Ferne Jacobs was born

And how the concept of Container for a Wind doesn't seem to have changed as a concept for 30 years, but the container for it has changed or. JACOBS: -it's just being blown on, you know, or the wind is, like, blowing right through it-right through it and-and changing the shape. I mean, the shape now is made by the wind. RIEDEL: Do you see any-I can think of a few connections between the journals and your coiled-structure pieces, but I'm wondering what connections, if any, you see between the journals and the coiled work that you do?

I think-knowing my story is seeing it, because I don't know it, but I see it. I see the evolution of a story. And that evolution of a story enters into the work. The shape isn't based on it or anything, but everything, the flowing-the flowing of these forces or whatever, you know, flow through it all, and it's the same forces. And I hope that in my work there is a depth of something that's.

RIEDEL: I was thinking about the journals and how something will come to you, and you say you'll just work that image or that narrative through till it's done, and then something else will appear. She started taking art classes in high school, and was one of the first female students at the Art Center in Los Angeles. In the mids she took a weaving workshop with the artist Arlene Fisch and from that time on devoted herself to fiber art.

Jacobs began making sculptural baskets in and used waxed linen to create intricate, coiled designs that often evoke organic forms. Open Daily, a. Collection Highlights 20th Century. Asian American Art.