Mayumi Amada: Misc

Mayumi Amada might be the best-known artist in the state working in the doily medium. She's created works based entirely on the cloth knickknacks, including an installation of four- to nine-foot-wide doilies floating in water as homage to her grandmothers, who taught her how to crochet. Other doilies she has created have been slightly starker, including one reading "Everybody Dies." At the very least it would make a good conversation piece in your living room. But Amada doesn't work exclusively in crocheted doilies; she creates doily shapes in plenty of other media, too. The self-proclaimed lover of cast-off objects created an installation in 2006 by collecting almost 700 plastic bottles, cutting the flower-shaped bottoms off, stringing them together with fishing line, and hanging it from the ceiling as a mesmerizing floating plastic doily. For another piece, Vanity's Doily, she made a video of synchronized swimmers swimming around to create a "human doily," which she then projected onto a vanity where a regular cloth doily would belong. When she's not dealing with crocheted arts, Amada has created clothing including a metal dress and bustier. "Misc" explores several of Amada's techniques and her attempt to create "something beautiful from a material we can find in our daily lives."
July 18-Sept. 5, 2008