Textile Society of America

 

Date of this Version

2010

Comments

Presented at “Textiles and Settlement: From Plains Space to Cyber Space,” Textile Society of America 12th Biennial Symposium, Lincoln, Nebraska, October 6-9, 2010. Copyright 2010 Textile Society of America.

Abstract

After ten years of public service, FiberScene.com, will go offline in Spring 2011. This website, co-founded by Susan Taber Avila and Myra Block Kaiser, played a significant role in promoting fine art with a textile sensibility. Prior to creating this site, there was nothing in cyberspace devoted to Fiber Art.

FiberScene’s initial goal was to enhance visibility for fiber artists, especially those who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, once a Mecca for fiber art. The website contained individual pages of local artists, a resource page, an event calendar, and a virtual gallery. The gallery provided a comprehensive overview of new work by an international group of artists through rotating exhibitions. Each virtual exhibition, along with a brief commentary, helped define and shape the field as it furthered the dialogue about the significance of fiber art. Visitors could also view past exhibitions in the Archive section of the site which presented a visual timeline of developments in the field.

Despite the obvious challenge of conveying the tactile nature of textiles through low resolution digital images, FiberScene.com evolved into a valuable resource for academic institutions, museums, curators, and designers, who frequently requested visual materials or used the site as a teaching tool. Now that many artists, galleries, and museums have their own websites, it is time for the founders to move on to other activities. While FiberScene.com no longer posts new work, all of the previous virtual exhibitions remain archived and available to the public.

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