Basketry by Artist Tina Fung Holder and Portraits by Artist Jan MacFarlane to show at Whitby Gift Shop and Gallery
Wisconsin artists Tina Fung Holder and Jan MacFarlane will introduce recent work at the opening of their show at Whitby Gift Shop and Gallery at Saint Benedict’s Monastery on Sunday, July 24, 2011.
Although she had no formal art education as a child growing up in a rural village in Guyana, South America, Tina Fung Holder has always had a passion for working with her hands and began making baskets as a child. She obtained a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she pursued her study of basket making techniques at the Field Museum of Natural History. After graduation, she worked as a freelance designer making jewelry using everyday objects, such as safety pins.
Now primarily focusing on basketry and using everything from leaves to vines and bark to weave together her final products, Fung Holder definitely thinks “outside of the basket.” Working with “anything that grows flexible,” she uses crochet hooks and tapestry needles for tools. Native cultures provide inspiration for Fung Holder’s unique style of basketry.
Fung Holder will be joined by portrait artist Jan MacFarlane, also of Northern Wisconsin. She will be showing a series of pastels and charcoal portraits of older women and young girls. “I drew portraits of several of my older women friends because I think women tend to become invisible as they age. I wanted to capture some of the spirit of these wonderful women and make them visible.” The portraits of young girls are from a mission trip to Honduras, showing the great beauty and freshness that exists even in impoverished conditions. In all her work, MacFarlane says, “I take time to create my vision of what I have seen. It’s a slow process.” She calls her art “a journal of my time spent looking to see what is there.”
Fung Holder’s work is in collections at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wis., and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. To preview Fung Holder’s work, visit http://tfhdesigns.com. MacFarlane teaches drawing at the Split Rock Program in Cloquet, Minn., icon painting at a studio in Pennsylvania and painting at d.Thomas Studio in Wisconsin. In addition to drawing and painting, she is also an accomplished stitchery artist who has done numerous commissions. She is a member of the Superior Artists Gallery in Washburn, Wisconsin.
The exhibit at Art and Heritage Place’s Whitby Gallery runs from Sunday, July 24 through Sunday, September 4. Hours for the gallery on the grounds of Saint Benedict’s Monastery are Tuesday – Friday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., and Saturday – Sunday, 1–3:30 p.m. The gallery is closed Mondays.