Ferne Jacobs Catalog
The Craft in America Center is pleased to present the first ever retrospective of Los Angeles artist Ferne Jacobs. Since the 1960s, Ferne Jacobs has been at the forefront of the revolution in fiber art. She has pioneered ways to create a new category of sculpture. Transforming materials and pushing boundaries, she builds solid structures with coiled, twined, and knotted thread. This exhibition is the first to survey more than fifty years of Jacobs’ pivotal and timeless work through the present. Jacobs’ intimate drawings and collage diaries, which have never been publicly displayed before now, provide an additional lens into her vision, inspiration, and philosophical perspective.
The Craft in America Center is pleased to present the first ever retrospective of Los Angeles artist Ferne Jacobs. Since the 1960s, Ferne Jacobs has been at the forefront of the revolution in fiber art. She has pioneered ways to create a new category of sculpture. Transforming materials and pushing boundaries, she builds solid structures with coiled, twined, and knotted thread. This exhibition is the first to survey more than fifty years of Jacobs’ pivotal and timeless work through the present. Jacobs’ intimate drawings and collage diaries, which have never been publicly displayed before now, provide an additional lens into her vision, inspiration, and philosophical perspective.
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Fisch suggested Jacobs continue with Mary Jane Leland
at California State University, Long Beach, which deepened
her technical understanding. While there, Jacobs learned
about Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, where she
went on to work with Olga de Amaral in 1967, and to meet
Jack Lenor Larsen, among others.
One early success occurred when Jacobs’ rug (fig. 1) with
abstract landscape imagery was selected for inclusion
in the 1968 landmark multimedia exhibition, California
Design 10. Woven on a loom when she was at California
State University, Long Beach, Jacobs exuberantly
integrated color, pattern, and texture. Although her
subsequent work would deviate far from this early
exploratory woven piece, it reflected an enthusiastic
awakening to what would become her medium.
With a base in weaving, Jacobs sought to learn off-loom
and three-dimensional techniques and she began to
experiment with sculptural pieces. Artists Joan Austin,
Neda Al-Hilali, and Dominic Di Mare, who became one of
her closest lifelong friends, further opened the floodgates
for Jacobs’ independent exploration of dimensional fiber.
Meeting Lenore Tawney in the mid 1970s, whom Jacobs
had admired deeply for many years, was the beginning of a
profound friendship and creative connection.
From the moment she learned to coil, from a worksheet
shared by a student attending a workshop taught by her
friend Joan Austin, she found a channel for expression that
has become a lifelong journey, spanning more than five
decades thus far. Austin was instrumental in researching
basket-making and advancing the contemporary
processes for three-dimensional fiber. Unlike the warprestrictions
of twining and other weaving processes,
coiling offered unlimited potential for expansion, color
changes, and it allowed Jacobs to generate hard forms.
10
BUILDING THE ESSENTIALS: FERNE JACOBS
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