Arts & Events

The Berkeley Art Center’s current show, “Loom & Lathe: The Art of Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale,” is full of revelations. 

Sekimachi, a weaver and fiber artist, and Stocksdale, a wood turner, are both internationally renowned but largely unrecognized in Berkeley, despite having lived and worked here for most of their lives. Sekimachi is in her early 80s; Stocksdale died in 2003 at the age of 89.  

“Loom & Lathe” is a handsomely staged survey of their work. It offers Berkeleyans a rare opportunity to appreciate the extraordinary achievements of these two local treasures. 

Be prepared to gasp in delight as you encounter Sekimachi’s hangings, scrolls, boxes, bowls and baskets, and Stocksdale’s bowls. These elegant and ingenious objects exploit and reveal the qualities of their materials in surprising ways. Many embody what curator Robbin Henderson calls “the lyrical dialog between the artists,” who were wed in the early ’70s, and whose creations often took the same form, rendered in different materials.  

At the same time, Sekimachi and Stocksdale worked in—and reworked—traditions peculiar to their respective crafts. As Suzanne Baizerman writes in the show’s beautifully produced catalogue, Sekimachi drew on both the Japanese culture of her family and the mainstream culture of the United States.  

Albert LeCoff’s essay, also in the catalogue, tells how Stocksdale was distinguished among modern wood turners by his “passion for the wood itself: finding it”—especially exotic wood—“working it, and showing it.” 

Sekimachi’s and Stocksdale’s lives and works also bear witness to the creativity of the contemporary Berkeley crafts community. Famous for its progressive politics, Berkeley is also nationally known for its fiber artists, ceramicists and woodworkers.  

As founding members of the Art Co-op, now ACCI gallery, which grew out of the mid-century progressive cooperative movement, Sekimachi and Stocksdale contributed to this town’s fertile melding of politics and art. Having nurtured that melding for over forty years with integrity, skill and economy, the Berkeley Art Center is the perfect venue for their creations. 

Loom & Lathe: The Art of  

Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale 

through April 27  

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. (Live Oak Park).  

Wed.–Sun., noon–5 p.m.  

Admission is free.  

644-6893.