Opening Reception — Richard Saja: TOILE, INTERRUPTED
Cost
Where
Troutbeck
515 Leedsville Road
Amenia, NY 12501
When
January 22, 2027
5–7 PM
Who
Please join us for the opening of Richard Saja's TOILE, INTERRUPTED at Troutbeck.
The exhibition continues an ongoing collaboration between Wassaic Project and Troutbeck, rooted in a shared commitment to supporting artists, fostering public engagement, and advancing cultural exchange in the Hudson Valley. Together, both institutions have cultivated a space where contemporary art, history, education, and community are brought into active conversation, extending the legacy of creative and civic exchange that has defined both places.
Artist statement
My enduring love and fascination for textiles derives from the absolutely unlimited interplay of pattern, color, and texture. There is no other medium where this trinity is so fully realized. I came up with the embellished toile concept while waking from sleep many years ago. The original idea was to embroider Maori facial tattoos onto figures in a toile de Jouy print, but I soon discovered there were none available where that concept could be realized successfully because of the relatively small scale of nearly all toile de Jouy prints. I thus amended the concept slightly to include any and all surface embellishment. Historically, Toile de Jouy is a print that through its dense repetition becomes anonymous. It's a tabula rasa begging for context not unlike a child's coloring book. The act of selectively embellishing small areas of it automatically inverts its historical usage: suddenly the anonymity of the print is broken and it evolves through its subversion, which appeals greatly to me. With an economy of means, a whole new context is created. There is another story there, it just needs to be drawn out.
· · ·
About the Artist
Richard Saja is an artist making work in Catskill, New York. After first attending the University of the Arts in Philadelphia to study surface design, he devoted his studies to the great books of Western Civilization at St. Johns College in Santa Fe, NM and received a BA as a math and philosophy major. After a brief stint working as an art director on Madison Avenue, all his interests coalesced and a small design firm, Historically Inaccurate Decorative Arts, was born in the early aughts. Though he occasionally feels the need to explore avenues of expression beyond that of the needle, the majority of Saja's work focuses on creating "interferences" of the formal patterns of french toile and tapestry through embroidery. He has exhibited internationally with shows in New York, Paris, London, as well as the MFA Boston, the National Museum of Embroidery in South Korea and the Musee de la Toile de Jouy in Paris. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Shelburne Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Related Events
Opening Reception — Richard Saja: TOILE, INTERRUPTED
Cost
Where
Troutbeck
515 Leedsville Road
Amenia, NY 12501
When
January 22, 2027
5–7 PM
Who
Please join us for the opening of Richard Saja's TOILE, INTERRUPTED at Troutbeck.
The exhibition continues an ongoing collaboration between Wassaic Project and Troutbeck, rooted in a shared commitment to supporting artists, fostering public engagement, and advancing cultural exchange in the Hudson Valley. Together, both institutions have cultivated a space where contemporary art, history, education, and community are brought into active conversation, extending the legacy of creative and civic exchange that has defined both places.
Artist statement
My enduring love and fascination for textiles derives from the absolutely unlimited interplay of pattern, color, and texture. There is no other medium where this trinity is so fully realized. I came up with the embellished toile concept while waking from sleep many years ago. The original idea was to embroider Maori facial tattoos onto figures in a toile de Jouy print, but I soon discovered there were none available where that concept could be realized successfully because of the relatively small scale of nearly all toile de Jouy prints. I thus amended the concept slightly to include any and all surface embellishment. Historically, Toile de Jouy is a print that through its dense repetition becomes anonymous. It's a tabula rasa begging for context not unlike a child's coloring book. The act of selectively embellishing small areas of it automatically inverts its historical usage: suddenly the anonymity of the print is broken and it evolves through its subversion, which appeals greatly to me. With an economy of means, a whole new context is created. There is another story there, it just needs to be drawn out.
About the Artist
Richard Saja is an artist making work in Catskill, New York. After first attending the University of the Arts in Philadelphia to study surface design, he devoted his studies to the great books of Western Civilization at St. Johns College in Santa Fe, NM and received a BA as a math and philosophy major. After a brief stint working as an art director on Madison Avenue, all his interests coalesced and a small design firm, Historically Inaccurate Decorative Arts, was born in the early aughts. Though he occasionally feels the need to explore avenues of expression beyond that of the needle, the majority of Saja's work focuses on creating "interferences" of the formal patterns of french toile and tapestry through embroidery. He has exhibited internationally with shows in New York, Paris, London, as well as the MFA Boston, the National Museum of Embroidery in South Korea and the Musee de la Toile de Jouy in Paris. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Shelburne Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art.
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