Featured Artist Toni Brogan

Textile artist Toni Brogan incorporates found furniture and recycled objects to create complex woven structures. Visit her website to see more of her fascinating work.

 

 

I was born and raised in New Zealand and I was a child of the seventies. Knitting, crocheting and sewing were part of everyday life.

 

 

My grandmother was a prolific knitter and crocheted beautiful fine tablecloths. She taught me to both knit and sew, skills I all but forgot when I left my childhood behind. Later, on multiple business trips as a food stylist, I found myself knitting again to unwind from travel and the work day.

 

 

Knitting led me to weaving, which I discovered while trawling through eBay looking for all things fiber. I was particularly drawn to textile artists from the sixties and seventies such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sheila Hicks, Francoise Grossen and Josep Grau-Garriga and their monumentally-sized wall hangings.

 

 

I too wanted to live in this abstract woven world, with its texture, expressiveness and sheer scale.

 

 

With these giants in mind, I started my weaving journey on a simple cardboard loom. I then upgraded to a small wooden frame loom and eventually settled upon using a clothing rack as my loom.

 

 

The work guided me deeper into form and structure, trying to create a language of texture and an abstract, three-dimensional sculptural world. Eventually, I started experimenting with using found furniture as my “loom” to warp up and weave on.

 

 

This leap allowed me to move away from the wall and toward more sculptural, representational pieces that you can walk around and experience from all sides.

 

 

For my 2021 solo show Chromatic Family my goal was to fill the room with a story about family threads and experience. The centerpiece was five colored panels in black, blue, green, magenta and orange, titled Death, Confusion, Toxicity, Dependency and Delusion; one for each of my siblings.

 

 

Nestled within each are found objects that pertain to each of us, splintered and disconnected as we now are. The five frames were accompanied by three furniture-based pieces called Childhood Innocence, The Family Dinner and Not Musical Chairs.

 

 

I am now building a new series of works based on foraged plants and seed pods from the woods that surround me in the Catskill mountains. Combined with plant fibers such as hemp, jute, sisal, raffia and henequen, this series will be titled Nature’s Gate with the first piece in this series called Nature’s Throne.

 

Artist Toni Brogan invites you to follow her on Instagram.

 

Want to stay current on cutting edge business articles from Artsy Shark, plus artist features, and an invitation to the next Call for Artists? Click below to sign up for our twice-monthly email. You’ll get all this plus opportunities and special offers that you can’t get anywhere else!