Our program this month will be a field trip to the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, for a tour of the exhibit "MATSURI! Japanese Festival Arts". This exhibition presents elaborate Japanese textiles, festive dress, and artifacts used in the joyously chaotic Shinto Buddhist festivals known as matsuri. The galleries will feature richly decorated festival garments and other works of art including sculptures, screens, shrine adornments, prints, and banners.
We are meeting on Sunday instead of Saturday since this is a special opening day celebration for the exhibit, a free afternoon of Japanese arts and culture featuring taiko drumming, theater and dance performances, calligraphy, chimes and food.
Also currently on exhibit at the Fowler is "KATSINA/kachina: Tradition, Appropriation, Innovation". Tithu are dolls that play a major role in a Hopi girl's right of passage and are believed to be created from the appearance of spirit beings known as Katsina symbols. Original tithu from the 19th century are on view as well as many contemporary descendents, including gallery painting and sculpture, toys, clothing, non-Hopi copies, and souvenirs.
Please meet at the cafe in the Anderson School of Business Management building at noon where we will have a general business meeting before our tour. The Anderson School of Business Management is the building just to the north of the Fowler (toward Sunset Blvd). The cafe has salads, sandwiches and coffee. When you come up from the parking garage, turn left as for the Fowler and go past the Fowler (it will be on your right). Keep going straight up the steps into the building. The cafe is right there, indoors and outdoors. There are a LOT of steps and there's probably a way to enter the building and use an elevator too.
Merna Strauch will be there before noon to collect your exhibit items for our show in November.
Please let Deanna know if you plan to come on the field trip, so we can send an approximate head count to the museum.
See the Fowler exhibits for more details on the exhibits.
For a map please visit http://www.fmch.ucla.edu/Info/map.htm
234 Museum Drive, Los Angeles
Admission $4
Saturday, October 19, 2002, at 10 a.m., we are privileged to have a tour led by docent Randall Hayden of the Southwest Museum. This is a special "extracurricular" activity to inspire our effort to contribute a booth at the Conference of the Association of Southern California Handweavers in May 2003. The theme of the booth is contemporary works inspired by early California Indians.
Randall Hayden writes,
"As you probably already know, California Indians, with the
notable exception of thick blankets made from twined strips of rabbit pelt, did not
have a strong textile tradition before Spanish missionization. They did, however,
have an incredibly rich tradition of basketry, and whether you are sitting at a floor
loom warped with linen, or fabricating a sifter from strips of split willow, weaving
is weaving is weaving. When you get down to it both technologies share a common heritage.
We have any number of beautifully patterned baskets. Some where the design is purely
textural or based on a simple change in the color of the materials. Some adorned with
beadwork, even some where the pattern is worked by catching the tiniest of flicker
feathers in the lashings of the coils. Any one could easily be translated into a
textile pattern by a creative weaver."
Don't you just want to go visit and see these works? If you're planning on coming, please let Deanna know at programs@schg.org. There is more information about the museum at http://www.southwestmuseum.org/ For a map please visit http://www.southwestmuseum.org/map.htm