Fiber Art Now: ARTwear and Interpretations 2025 at Vision Museum of Textile Art at Liberty Station

 by Patricia Frischer

Denise Yaghmourian

For those who subscribe to Fiber Art Now, this small selection of artists in the ARTwear exhibition were all  juried into a print exhibition included in the fall 2024 issue of that magazine.  Beth Smith, Managing Editor and Exhibitions Director of Fiber Art Now was a previous director of the Vision Museum of Textile Art (MoTA). MoTA Curatorial and Education Manager Armando Garcia-Orso made the selection for this display which is small but focused. As the title suggested all the works are made to be worn although maybe some for very special occasions.

The selection of just five of the works below are not clothes that would find a way into a closet, perhaps, but seem very at home in a gallery. Denise Yaghmourian gives us a patchwork of  patches. Amy Seeler’s necklace/scarf/albatross would certainly keep you anchored. Omar Antonio gives us a Met worthy Halloween costume.  Jesse Aviv presents 21^st century amour and Gitty Duncan’s shoes would make Fred Astaire’s day. 

Amy Seeler

Omar Antonio

Jesse Aviv

Gitty Duncan

The museum’s juried biennial, Interpretations 2025, has more than 40 artists included and continues to elevate the textile art form. Jurors include Holly Brackmann, Luisa Gil Fandino and Paula Kovarik. The selection below does not include any of the award winners, so there is plenty more to see in this show which covers an enormous variety of techniques and materials. The choice before was made with criterial of what seemed the most unusual and was photogenic. 

Maggy Rozycki Hiltner

Maggy Rozycki Hiltner - detail

Rebecca Edwards

Meredith Strauss

Meredith Strauss - detail

Diane Melms

Diane Nunez

Hanna Wojdała-Markowska

Fiber Art Now – ARTwear  
Interpretations 2025  
Vision Museum of Textile Arts
Both on view Oct18 to Jan 31, 2026
2825 Dewey Road, Suite 100 | San Diego, 92106
Wed /Thurs. 10 am to 2 pm, Fri/Sat 10 am to 4 pm

Radenko Milak: Four Seasons Interrupted at Madison Gallery

by Patricia Frischer

These black and white watercolors by Bosnian artist, Radenko Milak appear at first glance to be photographs. They are so detailed but a close examination reveals the shorthand the artist uses to suggest figures and structures. In this new series of 16-18 paintings you are not really asked to figure out the seasons…his interest is really in climate change but that is created more by a mood than the obvious portrayal of snowbanks, fallen leaves, spring flowers or summer heat.  The seasons are merged together. These are New York City and urban to the core.

"The mission of my gallery is to bring global contemporary art from artists worldwide to Southern California." Says Lorna York, owner of Madison Gallery in Solana Beach on Cedros. We are grateful to Rebecca Hiller, the principal art dealer for showing us around. What a boon for North County to be able to see such impressive world-wide art works locally.

 

Radenko Milak: Four Seasons Interrupted
Madison Gallery
on view until December 21, 2025
Opening reception Nov 8 from 6-9.
320 S Cedros Ave., suite 200, Solana Beach, 92075
Regular Hours: Monday - Saturday 10am-5pm

Unknown Frontiers at Techne Art Center

 by Patricia Frischer 

Jonathon Schipper 

Crash and bang are the first sounds I heard entering TECHNE Art Center for the Unknown Frontier exhibition. But this was not an accident. It was sound coming from the falling works by sculptor Jonathan Schipper. In Schipper’s world, time isn’t just the ticking of a clock—it’s a sly accomplice. He makes you watch the world fall apart… slowly, artfully, and with impeccable timing. The framed art in the center of his wall, lifts straight out of the wall, a mechanical arm emerges with a life-like finger which then rotates and upsets the other works, one by one. Is that central work of mirror image cathedrals the robot winner of the wall? Maybe or maybe Schipper just has a fondness for reminding people that time will have its way with us all.

The humor of this work, literally knocking the art off the walls, set the tone for this show and I found myself looking for humor and finding some in much of the art on display. Hurrah…beauty and humor are valuable commodities in today’s world and we need as much as we can find. 

Jonathon Schipper 

Jonathon Schipper 

Jen Hitchings creates a meditation on the age-old romance between humankind and nature—a relationship as mystical, mythological, and codependent as any doomed love affair. 

Tim Murdoch art is hand (or foot)-worked, repurposed, and lightly seasoned with humor and exists as aesthetic public mischief.

Tim Murdoch- detail

Tim Murdoch

Will Hutnick is looking through a queer, ecologically tuned lens that refuses to play nicely with binaries.

Will Hutnick

Delilah Strunkel explores imaginative micro-worlds and patterns—those hidden little universes you didn’t know were lurking inside you, like houseguests who never left. 

Frank Webster paints the natural world the way a poet might transcribe an avalanche—delicately, yet with a sense you may not get out alive. 

Kate Stone's works is perfectly timed for Halloween. A simple piece of beige carpet, but look close and it is so creepy and funny at the same time as the teeth are very similar to the pile of the rug.

Kate Stone - detail

Christopher Lin is building the future’s ruins while we’re still tripping over today’s.

Christopher Lin

David Kramer takes the chatter in his head: disclaimers, distractions, and self-deprecating jokes that elbow their way onto the surface of his hooked rugs. 

Briana Miyoko Stanley Lane has given us part memory palace, part obstacle course, and part séance for the things we’ve lost. In short, she has built a world you can walk through—though she might gently suggest you watch your step.

Briana Miyoko Stanley Lane

Hwang (Bo) Kim has dabbled in everything—drawing, assemblage, printmaking, photography—before settling down with oil paint, the way someone might finally surrender to sensible shoes. So comfortable, reliable and and you want them to last forever.

Chuck Thomas, is owner and curator of this show and it is always a thrill to see his studio open and the work on view. I find the motion and the color in his work, just pure joy. 

Unknown Frontier
TECHNE Art Center
Curated by Chuck Thomas
On view until Dec 5
Other artists featured include artists Jeff Feld, Sylvia Fernandez, Nathanael Flink, Jason Clay Lewis.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday 1-6pm
1609 Ord Way, Oceanside, CA 92056

Omni Intelligent at Mandeville Gallery at UCSD

by Patricia Frischer

Lou Cantor’s The Oracle, 2023

Ceci Moss in her last curated exhibition for the Mandeville Gallery before taking up her new position at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting Omni Intelligent. The premise of this show seems to be how we will be communicating with A.I. in the future, but the twist comes as artists are also challenged to think about how A.I. will deem to communicate with us.  Two of the artists brought the sense of smell into their work, but most are visual and although there are textures, we are still in the ‘do not touch” the art world. There is sound, of course, as we are now used to seeing headphones attached to the art works.  

 
Lou Cantor’s The Oracle, 2023 greets you at the door and sets the stage for the rest of the exhibition. The pair of lips is suspended in the air and although you have to put on the headphones to hear the disembodied voice of A.I. you are most intrigued by how this is created. A closer observation reveals that it is LED light mounted on fan blades. You can see this more easily in the photo and film, but in real life the lips are un-interrupted. Humans are definitely the lower order in this dialogue

Rhonda Holberton Other Known Tomorrows, 2025

Rhonda Holberton Other Known Tomorrows, 2025

Rhonda Holberton Other Known Tomorrows, 2025

 
Other Known Tomorrows, 2025 by Rhonda Holberton is a three-part installation, a video of brain-wave activity which records stimulation by a “perfume” essence you are invited to sniff. And a 3-D printed rock that actually holds the bottle.  This was art meets science collaboration with researcher Dr. Ying Choon Wu, who directs UC San Diego’s Insight lab at the Institute for Neural Computation. Watch for the AI-manipulated video on the front of the gallery. 

 
 

agustine zegers vaho arborescente, 2025 

agustine zegers vaho arborescente, 2025 is simply a small sample of scent. When you smell it, you are invited to envision a forest, maybe after an electric storm because she has suggested that future trees are actually able to communicate with A.I. We know that trees communicate with each through their roots and that there are electrical elements with all plant matter so even though this was a minimal visual experience this was conceptually so interesting.

Star Feliz,  in Siren of Oblivion, 2024

Star Feliz,  in Siren of Oblivion, 2024 gives us one of  the most easily interpreted work. The water vessel from an ancient society is hooked up with cables and its middle now is communicating through a digital screen. The vessel reminds us of an earth mother and there is something siren like about the sounds that go with this piece.

 

CROSSLUCID  Red the Ocean Around U, 2024 

CROSSLUCID in their game design Red the Ocean Around U, 2024 instead of writing prompts for A.I. to respond to, the game asks the questions for the gamer to answer. U is the character and Claude is the A.I. and the adventures begins.

Eglė Budvytytė Songs from the compost: mutating bodies, imploding stars, 2020 

Eglė Budvytytė created a film Songs from the compost: mutating bodies, imploding stars, 2020 peopled by alien and human dancers responding to the real setting of a sand dune  shared by Russia and Lithuania.  There is a life cycle aspect but besides aliens, it was unclear how this related to A.I. The rainbow color is not present in the actual film, this was divine intervention by the android phone!
 

Ánima Correa

Ánima Correa - detail

Ánima Correa presents the Repeater sculptures which represent the undersea cable which first started to connect universities via internet and the Espejitxs paintings which are bit a like big brother watching from on high.

 

Amia Yokoyama 

Amia Yokoyama has been working with stop-motion clay animation but for this work those figures have been converted into 3D holograms  in ceramic frames. She explains: “I am exploring what happens when something exists in multiple dimensions simultaneously….”

 
 

Marcus Zúñiga brown archaeoastronomy, 2025 

Marcus Zúñiga named his art work brown archaeoastronomy, 2025 to reference the stars in the sky. The structure  which reaches up, references symbols from New Mexican weavings. There is something reassuring about how the sky does not change through time and might hold mysteries yet to be discovered.  

           
 
Omni Intelligent
Mandeville Gallery
University of California San Diego
On view until Dec 6, 2026
Wed-Sat, 12-8pm

The Designer Who Rocks the Frocks in Cygnet’s Follies

 By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

The new Cygnet Theatre takes a new look at 1970’s Follies. 
(Karli Cadel Photography)

This month there’s a great event at Liberty Station: the grand opening of “The Joan”, Cygnet Theatre’s  brand-new 32,000-sq.ft. Performing Arts Center named in honor of the late arts patron/philanthropist Joan Jacobs and built on the spot where the old Naval Exchange used to be.

In 1997, when the Naval Training Center (NTC) was decommissioned, nobody knew what to do with this space, so it remained empty until last year when Cygnet Theatre, formerly based in Old Town, decided to turn it into its new home--The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center…a major undertaking.

They wanted to open with what Artistic Director Sean Murray called “a statement piece” so they chose Follies, a musical with book by James Goldman and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim that premiered in NYC in 1971 and won many awards, including a Tony for Sondheim’s musical score and a Tony for Best Direction of a Musical for Harold Prince and Michael Bennett.

Sean Murray begins Cygnet’s exciting new phase by directing this show about a group of showgirls from the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s who get together for a reunion in a crumbling old theater where they all once performed. They and the producer/director of their Ziegfeld-like Follies plus some of their attending husbands and sometime-lovers appear onstage …along with the young ghosts of their former selves.

“It’s a memory play, very interesting and beautiful, with people remembering what their lives used to be, and the ghosts of their pasts are present,” said Costume Designer Elisa Benzoni, when we interviewed her in her Costume Shop a few weeks before Follies opened.

 

In the Costume Shop with Elisa Benzoni. (Maurice Hewitt)

“This is my home,” she said, as she showed us some of her works-in-process, most of which were not yet ready for photo ops. 

She’d been doing extensive research on the styles of the periods involved and loved having a chance to play with feathers and beads and glitter and sparkle, but anytime she felt historical accuracy overwhelmed the storytelling, she went with the storytelling.

“The characters come to this reunion presenting their best selves, so there are bright colors and patterns, but the play soon shows what’s happening underneath,” she said.  “My hope is that the costumes help clarify the moments in the present along with the moments we dive inside their minds.”

A character side by side with her former self. (Karli Cadel Photography)

Another character alongside her former self. (Karli Cadel Photography)

This is what you might call a bittersweet musical, with everyone’s follies exposed, and many late-life regrets. But a high point in Follies is “I’m Still Here,” the show’s most memorable song sung by well-known performer Leigh Scarrett, wearing one of our favorite Elisa Benzoni designs.

Leigh Scarrett, looking great in her costume and singing her heart out.

Elisa’s Confession: The most challenging part of the show is the last 40 minutes, when there are six costume changes for each of the 27 characters! 

About the Designer:  Elisa Benzoni was born in Milano, Italy, moved to Southern California at age 10, and ended up with a Master’s Degree in Costume Design from UC San Diego. She was happy to discover a vibrant theater scene here and has become a significant part of it. She’s been with Cygnet for two years now and is the mother of a two-month-old baby boy. “I wear the baby with me for all my fittings!” she said.

Follies
Cygnet Theatre
Just extended through October 12, 2025
2880 Roosevelt Rd. San Diego, CA 92106
Tickets and info: 619-337-1525.

 

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net