Ferne Jacobs
TRUTHSAYERS
© Nancy Margolis Gallery and Ferne Jacobs. Photo by Bernard Wolf.
Since a life-changing workshop with artist Arline Fisch in the mid-1960s, Ferne Jacobs has dedicated over five decades to producing avant-garde fiber art. An early proponent of experimentation with natural fibers, she went off-loom to create organic and ethereal basket sculptures through a labor-intensive process of coiling waxed linen row by row. Jacobs animates these simple lines into fully fledged forms, accentuated by dynamic color play. Her large-scale sculptures are seas of undulating lines that have no obvious point of origin or end, reflecting her intuitive process. Objects curve and sway with graceful movement as though they are dancing in the wind.
She often turns basket weaving inside out, resulting in work that looks biological, such as wall works resembling cellular cross-sections of circulatory or skeletal systems, and in a less literal expression, the fluidity of emotions. After all, she says she wants to ensure that the work “feels alive, that it has breath.” Jacobs is a recipient of the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artist (2005–6) and three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1973, ’77, ’90). Her first retrospective exhibition, Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs, at the Craft in America Center, celebrates her remarkable career and contributions to the field of fiber art.
B. 1942, Chicago, IL
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
WW90
Ferne Jacobs, Two Angels, 2015, Waxed linen thread. Courtesy of the artist and Nancy Margolis Gallery, photography by R & Company.
WW91
Ferne Jacobs, Interior Passages, 2016, Waxed linen thread. Courtesy of the artist and Nancy Margolis Gallery, photography by R & Company.