Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs

“When I start it’s a color, a size, and I see a shape… I just start
playing with the line and then I make a connection…and then
suddenly I am in that piece. And we are having a relationship. I
never know what it’s going to look like until it gets done.”
Ferne Jacobs has been at the forefront of the revolution in
fiber art since the 1960s. She has pioneered the formation of a
new category of sculpture. Transforming materials and pushing
boundaries, she builds solid structures with coiled, twined, and
knotted thread. This exhibition is the first to survey more than
fifty years of Jacobs’ pivotal and timeless artwork from 1966
through the present.
Jacobs has lived and practiced in Echo Park for most of her life,
yet she has rarely exhibited in Los Angeles. As such, this exhibition
is a homecoming. Like countless other artists working in
Southern California during this era and prior to recent shifts in
the art world, most of her work migrated to galleries, collections,
and museums in New York, the East Coast, and other parts of
the country. She is among the leading artists who have shaped
the national fiber movement that has flourished in California
over many decades, having national and international influence.
This gathering of work reflects Jacobs’ overall artistic evolution
and highlights her unrelenting search for meaning in form, color,
and process.
Early on in her career, Jacobs studied at Art Center College of
Design and she took painting at Pratt Institute, but the sensory
aspects of fiber, including smell and touch, were what really
stoked her interest. After a first weaving class at Barnsdall Art
Park in the early 1960s, she built a self-made fiber education
by seeking out classes and personally connecting with leading
artists and teachers. In 1965, she took a workshop in San Diego
with Arline Fisch, whom she credits with truly teaching her to
CONNECTED CELLS, BREATHING FORMS 7