TOSHIKO HORIUCHI
11/05/2011.
by Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam is one of Japan's leading fibre artists, and one of a very small number that sometimes use knitting or crochet in their work. Living in Canada, she now specialises in creating large, interactive textile environments that function both as imaginative and vibrant explorations of colour and form, at the same time as providing thrilling play environments.
"Luminous Column". Materials: Nylon Mylar. Techniques: Hand Knitting, Crochet. Location: 'Fabric in Space' - exhibition, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. 1987. © Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam.
"'Atmosphere of the Floating Cube". Materials: Nylon. Techniques: Hand Knitting, Crochet. Location: National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. © Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam.
The Hakone Pavillion with Tezuka Architects. © Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam.
The beginning of her career coincided with the development of 'fibre art' as an active sub-section within the fine art world. Her work was very much a part of the new wave of fibre art that happened in the 1970's, and she was one of several Japanese artists to make a deep impression.
'Fibre Columns/Romanesque Church' and 'Atmosphere of the Floating Cube' were two pieces that were featured within several major accounts of that movement, in books such as 'The Art Fabric Mainstream' by Mildred Constantine & Jack Lenor Larsen. There they describe how 'she knit hundreds of gold and silver lengths, stretched them into concave panels, and composed them as a cube. Then, with powerful knee-height floodlights, she transformed the whole into a haloed radiance.'
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Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam
Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam. She was born in 1940 and attended Hibiya High School - a school known throughout Japan for it's high standards. She studied fine art at the Tama Art University, Tokyo, followed by a Masters at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan.
