Conjured through “distressed” materials, the fiber art creations of artist Kevan Lunney are on display at the Monmouth Museum, beginning with a public-welcome reception this Friday evening.
There have been more than enough self-appointed art critics throughout the centuries, who have likened someone’s creative vision to garbage. But there have not been nearly enough creative people who revel in the power of “rubbish” to speak to the value of time, tide and twice-told tales.
When the latest in the acclaimed NJ Emerging Artists series of exhibits goes on display at the Monmouth Museum this Friday, August 14, it will spotlight the fiber-art creations of Kevan Lunney, with the Brunswick-based creative present in the building’s Nilson Gallery during a free and public-welcome reception between the hours of 6 to 8 pm. Titled Archaeology: Shared Wisdom, It’s a chance to meet and talk with the artist who says of her work, “I want you to feel you are listening to an ancient conversation, that others are reaching through time to speak to you.”
An award-winning quilter and veteran designer of sleepwear and her own Serenity line of hand-painted silk lingerie, the lifelong sewing enthusiast eventually turned her skills with thread and brush to a series of painted textile constructions that have been described as equal parts light and darkness. As the Museum tells it, inspiration for Lunney’s work came from a radio program on “the discovery of papyrus documents from an ancient Egyptian rubbish mound.” Realizing that it was doubtful the authors anticipated their debris would be unearthed and inspected some 2,000 years in the future, Lunney imagined someone examining our garbage two millennia from now; reflecting on the things that we leave behind, and how everywhere we walk we touch things that have come before us.
Addressing the questions of what has lasting value and permanence, Lunney’s signature pieces interpret her answers through rows of stitches that “represent words of wisdom shared across generations,” with metal leaf symbolizing “the value of natural elements,” and distressed linen incorporating circular patterns that suggest “never–ending time and life cycles.”
The intent, it’s said, is to “convey a hopeful message that time’s eternal presence provides endless opportunities for regeneration, if we hearken to the wisdom waiting for us from the past.”
Admission to Friday’s opening reception at the Middletown-based museum (on the Lincroft campus of Brookdale Community College) is free of charge. The Archaeology: Shared Wisdom exhibit remains on display during regular operating days through September 13, with Lunney returning on Wednesday, September 2 for an Artist Talk (Trash Talk?) on her techniques and inspirations. Check the Museum website for information on regular hours and admissions.
