Gyöngy Laky: Screwing with Order Assembled art, actions and creative practice
Publisher: Arnoldsche (July 11, 2022)
Language: English
Hardcover: 328 pages
Dimensions: 25.8 x 2.9 x 28.7 cm
By: Tom Grotta (Editor), Rhonda Brown (Editor), with contributions by Mija Riedel, and David M. Roth and a foreword by Jim Melchert
The first comprehensive monograph on the work of this exceptional artist; Screwing With Order explores the foundations of the Fiber Art movement in America.
Designed by Tom Grotta, with text edit assistance from Laky and Rhonda Brown, and featuring Tom’s photography and that of several other photographers, the book examines the career of renowned textile artist and sculptor Gyöngy Laky from three perspectives. First, is Laky’s personal story of immigration and education narrated by arts and culture writer, Mija Reidel. Second, is an assessment of the evolution and impetus for Laky’s artwork by David M. Roth, editor and publisher of Squarecylinder, a San Francisco Bay Area online visual art magazine. Third, are images of forms, vessels and wall works, 249 pages, divided into seven sections: Drawings in Air, Grids, Vessels, Words & Letters, Signs & Symbols, Site Installations, and Abstractions.
Renowned American textile artist and sculptor Gyöngy Laky (b. 1944) was once described as a “wood whisperer.” Her highly individual, puzzle-like assemblages of timber and textiles helped to significantly propel the growth of the contemporary fiber-arts movement.
Laky’s art traverses an extraordinary personal story: Born amid the bombings of World War II, she escaped from post-war, Soviet-dominated Hungary; a sponsorship from a family in Ohio, grade school in Oklahoma, and a course of study at the University of California, Berkeley, followed, before founding Fiberworks Center for Textile Arts in the 1970s and fostering innovations as a professor at the University of California, Davis.
The publication Screwing with Order provides insight into her studio practice, activism, and teaching philosophy, which champions sustainable art and design, original thinking, and the value of the unexpected.
