Anatomy 101

Artists
Jim Wagner
Melissa Arrospide
Patrick Meier
Alison Shepard
Jen Edwards
Aimee Smith
P.J. Grimm
Maureen Holub
 

A Mad Tea {Towel} Party!

Opening Reception
July 11th,    6-10pm
through July 25th

A most mundane household object, the tea towel is used for drying dishes and wiping up kitchen counters. Tea towels were originally used to keep scones or a pot of tea warm, and were also used by the mistress of the house to dry fine china. From these humble origins, artists and designers now reinvent the tea towel, treating its surface as a blank canvas, and sometimes ignoring function altogether.

The tea towel has become both collectible kitchen decor and affordable art. This exhibit brings together diverse works by 25 artists and designers from all over the world, using very different approaches to this common object, including:

Dutch designer Sigrid Calon's custom damask tea towels woven by the Textile Museum in Tilburg, the Netherlands

Eleanor Grosch of Philadelphia-based Push Me Pull You Design, whose Charley Harper-inspired motifs have garnered her commissions from Keds and Urban Outfitters

Jenny Sauer of Cincinnati-based design studio Three Sheets 2 the Wind, whose contribution is a delicate, almost childlike nature screenprint on linen

Ben Long of Indianapolis-based Fab Crew, a muralist and public artist who is working on a small canvas for once

Heather Moore of Skinny laMinx, an editorial illustrator based in Capetown, South Africa, whose simple, retro forms resemble cut paper

The humble tea towel is no longer merely relegated to the tasks of the kitchen. Reinvented, its form offers a unique challenge and serves as a new canvas for artists and designers. This show brings together some of the most exciting contemporary talent worldwide, most exhibiting in Cincinnati for the first time.