Anna Arzt is a fiber artist who has exhibited in the Carolinas. Her recent exhibitions include repeated showings at Yadkin Valley Fiber Center in Elkin, Metropolitan Arts Center in Greenville, and Greer Cultural Arts Center. Anna currently serves as the Programs Chair and Board Member of Tapestry Weaver’s South in Atlanta. She has lectured at institutions such as Mahalina Foundation, Greenville Center for Creative Arts, and Furman University. Anna’s biography describes her working in labor-intensive textiles as a “response to the fast-paced and results-based world we now live in”.
Consisting of three formats of work, the portfolio of Anaa Arzt contains experimental fiber works, contemporary basketry, and tapestries. Often revealing a minimalist wabi-sabi approach, the various fiber artworks convey the raw texture of the material along with portraying the substance based in fragility. She works with unusual and fine raw materials such as pineapple fiber, rice grains, Italian leather, and hemp. The baseline fiber works and experiments contain the raw color of the material or neutral tones and come in a variety of forms from installations to portable, framed artworks. These abstracted forms are meant to convey a puristic form of elements such as light, oxygen, and space. With open negative space, the pieces containing hollowed out gaps reveal a passing of natural components in an art contemplating subtlety and anticipation.
The contemporary basketries and tapestries have a more finished appearance to them over the baseline fiber series. These tapestries often have an aspect of camouflage with a rough blend of tones as if they are symbolic or tribalistic hunters or even paramilitary figures. Other pieces are symbolic of ballet with strips of bows weaved into each other with a rose-colored palette. The ‘ballet pieces’ represent an essence of the costumes associated with dance, such as fine velvet and silk. Finally, the contemporary basket series are more aesthetic and conceptual than they are functional. Many of these basket works have a completely unstable structure or narrow openings along with composed in a way to not be practical. These contradictions are intentional and reveals the artist wanting to force the viewer to consider basketry as a minimalist artform rather than a tool or household item.
Portable Randomness remains the most non-functional of the contemporary basketry series. The wild curvature, angular form, and unstable qualities reveals a ‘concept’ of a basket, rather than a literal functional tool. As a result, Portable Randomness can be described as more of an installation due to the fragility of the piece rather than a piece of basketry or even a sculpture. Additionally, the rawness of the piece and free-flowing Italian leather strips behave as a creature-like entity which seems to grasp or lunge towards the viewer with flee-flowing mythological ‘limbs’ similar to a Kraken.
What we have with a contemporary artist such as Anna Arzt is a creator willing to elevate various form of fiber into integrative practices such as portable art, installation, and even redefining the purpose of craft as a non-functional aesthetic. Not only in exposed material, the way the fiber artworks are assembled are often meant to accentuate fragility and imperfections in order to capture light and air, expressing the natural elements. These accented pieces reflect curvature, angularity, strips, and limb-like free-flowing forms to grasp at negative space and the viewer. Even when presented as two-dimensional works, such as in the tapestry series, these pieces reflect an ancient sensibility based in patterns recognizable to primordial dance, hunting, and paramilitary activities. These patterns seem to redefine the meaning of concealment and disguise. The variety, scope, and complexity of Anna Arzt’s fiber art reveals a meditative mindfulness towards natural inclinations with a contemporary purpose.