This site uses cookies – More Information.
Meeting the Clouds Halfway
Meeting
the Clouds
Halfway
With Terrol Dew Johnson, Meeting the Clouds Halfway at MOCA Tucson presents a series of experiments blending traditional craft with contemporary design. Ranging from basketry to architecture, the work explores the surrounding Sonoran Desert as a place of inspiration, opportunity, and collaboration.
location
Tucson, Arizona
year
2016
collaborators
Terrol Dew Johnson
Curator
Alexandra Cunningham Cameron
Exhibition
MOCA Tucson
- MOCA Tucson
- MOCA Tucson
Coiling is at the core of the collaboration with Tohono O’odham artist and activist Terrol Dew Johnson. What began as a conversation about the similarities between traditional Native American craft and cutting-edge design became a decade-long exchange that reimagines an ancient material practice within the needs of a contemporary world. The result of this dialogue is a range of constructions, from baskets to architecture, which suggests cross-cultural sharing as a means of reckoning, manifesting a shared truth that inspires reflection and action.
For many generations, the Tohono O’odham have coiled baskets out of desert fibers not only for domestic use but also as a ceremonial meditation that unites art with life. The act of coiling creates form through an intuitive geometric system and iterative movements, building on a set of principles that can be manipulated to create new compositions.
- Copper Coil 03
- Grass Coil 01
- Horse Hair Coil 01
- Wire Coil 05 w/Yucca
- Grass Coil 04
- Grass Coil 02
- Copper Coil 01
- Wire Coil 01
- Wire Coil 02
- Band Shell Site Model
- Wood Basket 02
- Wood Basket 01
Meeting the Clouds Halfway evolves Johnson and Aranda\Lasch’s new series of collaborative coil baskets into furniture, and prototypical structures like a desert shelter and a band shell. Together they produce a landscape of desert expressions shaped by bear grass, wood, copper, and minerals.
Baskets
Wood Basket 01
Copper Coil 04
Inlaid Gourd, Terrol Dew Johnson
Copper Coil 02
Wood Basket 02
Wire Coil 01
Copper Coil 01
Wire Coil 05 w/Yucca
Wire Coil 02
Copper Coil 03
Form Over Function
Grass Coil 02
Gourd Basket, Terrol Dew Johnson
Knot 03
Grass Coil 02
Furniture
Coil Table
Coil Table
Wire Nest
Architecture Models and Prototypes
Seed Bank Site Model
Desert Shelter Site Model
Olaski Site Model
Band Shell Site Model
Seed Bank Prototype
Model Installation
Installation
“The coil is the key to understanding our show. The act of coiling starts with one central point around which a material is wound, spiralling outwards and upwards in concentric circles until a structure is created.”
MOCA Tucson 2016
Model Installation
- Photo: Steven Meckler
Meeting the Clouds Halfway is a continuation of a long-standing collaboration with artist and activist, Terrol Dew Johnson.
A gifted weaver from a young age, Johnson has achieved national acclaim for pioneering abstract constructions that transcend familiar forms and materials in a way that invites reflection on a long-established practice. Johnson’s intention to champion novel approaches to cultural traditions informs every aspect of his life, and ultimately led him to found Tohono O’odham Community action, an organization that advocates for a healthy and vital tribal community. His work has won numerous awards and resides in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Heard Museum.
“Together, [Johnson and Aranda\Lasch] produced a collection of experimental woven constructions that highlight parallels between craft, design, and architecture, digital and analog algorithm-based processes, repetitive manual and automated practices, and different methods of knowledge sharing.”
-Michelle Millar Fisher, MoMA
Recognition
\ Related Projects
