Touch/Don’t Touch: Form + Texture at AVA

Mar 14, 2024

Nancy Sepe, Tied to the Rails, Wood, silk and other fabric, metal, wire, plastic, paint

I keep my hands to myself, just as I learned in kindergarten.

It’s a problem with fiber art, these itchy, eager fingers. Because while the exhibition at AVA Gallery, Form + Texture, is a feast for the eyes, many of the pieces provoke a profound desire to touch.

Dayna Talbot, The Chaos in My Mind, wool and threads

According to scientific and other commentators, we live in an “ocular-centric” culture in which vision is viewed (no pun) as a predominant sense. Descartes is credited with describing how blind persons move about the world and take in information as “seeing with the hands,” a concept that apparently has influenced the development of Braille, among other things. There’s a study using MRI imaging that says that tactile and visual stimuli enrich each other in the brain’s perception, and then there is a different study that claims that we are able to predict how an object might feel simply by looking at it, and vice versa. If you see a beautiful leather purse in a store window, your (even empty) hands are imagining how it would feel, and they’d be right. So maybe just eyeing the art should be sufficient to convey the feel of it? No hands needed after all.

Regardless, while the urge to touch the art persists, I never do because I think that is the unstated (and sometimes stated) rule in galleries and museums. Besides, as your mother would no doubt remind you, “what if everyone did it?” The artworks might not survive, or become worn, or smudged by so many hands. (I am leaving out the COVID-induced fear of touching anything. That may deserve its own essay.)

Marcie Scudder, My Mother’s Garden, paper and thread, “I begin with a photograph. In this case - the photos are of the garden that was left to me when my mother died. I cut. I fold. I sew. And - I reimagine.”

Marcie Scudder, whose work “My Mother’s Garden,”(photo, above) is on display, reflected on her particular piece. Asking her if she had any thoughts about viewers touching the work, I made the mistake of assuming that the delicacy of her creation would surely mean hands-off. Her piece has appeared in settings other than AVA, and she surprised me with this response “ . . . although my work appears ‘delicate’ . . . I do encourage people to touch. Everyone’s always surprised it’s made of paper!”

Nevertheless, I am not recommending that you touch the objects in Form + Texture, however irresistible the urge; I have since learned that the gallery prefers a no-touch policy for the obvious reason of avoiding potential damage.

Breslin Bell, undercover, Wallpaper, lithographs, frames, waiting room chairs. (To the left, Susan Steinbrock, Pink Wrap, Wool, cotton, and ribbon)

The exhibiting artists of form + texture have used brilliant colors, textures, sculpted forms, design, and materiality. Their handmade choices are aesthetically appealing, and poetic titles reveal a rich and personal visual vernacular. The exhibition is a feast for the eyes and heart.

Recently, the Hood Museum installed a table called “Learn Through Touch,” an attempt to incorporate touch into the viewer experience while keeping the art itself safe from the dirt and wear of constant handling. The table contains samples of the materials used in the towering artworks of two artists, Nick Cave and Jeffrey Gibson, in a gallery located just inside the museum’s entrance from the Russo Atrium.

In the meantime, it’s interesting to ponder how fabric and fiber art seem to generate that need for touch in just about every viewer. Maybe because our fingers are well-married to the feel of it; we hold, stroke, pleat, form, fold, smooth it from a very early age. From the Form + Texture statement:

Fabric is linked to the body and integrated into our lives: we wear it, we sleep under it, we are wrapped up in it when we are born, and we are buried in it.

Form + Texture will be on view in the Linda Roesch Gallery at AVA Gallery in Lebanon NH throughout March, 2024.

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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.