String, Felt, Thread presents an unconventional history of the American art world, chronicling the advance of thread, rope, string, felt, and fabric from the "low" world of craft to the "high" world of art in the 1960s and 1970s and the emergence today of a craft counterculture. In this full-color illustrated volume, Elissa Auther discusses the work of American artists using fiber, considering provocative questions of material, process, and intention that bridge the art-craft divide.

Drawn to the aesthetic possibilities and symbolic power of fiber, the artists whose work is...

In the heady and hallucinogenic days of the 1960s and '70s, a diverse range of artists and creative individuals based in the American West--from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest--broke the barriers between art and lifestyle and embraced the new, hybrid sensibilities of the countercultural movement. Often created through radically collaborative artistic practices, such works as Paolo Soleri's earth homes, the hand-built architecture of the Drop City and Libre communes, Yolanda Lopez's political posters, the multisensory movement workshops of Anna and Lawrence...

In the heady and hallucinogenic days of the 1960s and '70s, a diverse range of artists and creative individuals based in the American West--from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest--broke the barriers between art and lifestyle and embraced the new, hybrid sensibilities of the countercultural movement. Often created through radically collaborative artistic practices, such works as Paolo Soleri's earth homes, the hand-built architecture of the Drop City and Libre communes, Yolanda Lopez's political posters, the multisensory movement workshops of Anna and Lawrence...