On October 14, innovative needlework will be unveiled when Foxy

Wool, recent work by Mark Olshansky opens at the Knox Gallery.

Olshansky is a Knox Gallery alumnus as co-exhibitor with Geoffrey Young

and Peggy Reeves in the three-person show Off the Grid in 2016.

Needlepoint is created by stitches worked across a small grid ground

cloth, so perhaps it follows that this artist’s works are geometric, with odd

angles and complex shapes. Since his last Knox Gallery appearance his

work has become more complex in color combination, texture, and stitch.

He uses small accents of color over broad fields, and blends yarns within

an area as a painter would mix colors on a palette.

The artist lives in Great Barrington and is an unstoppable worker. At

ninety, he spends his afternoons stitching and listening to his beloved

classical music. Although fiber-based mediums are slow in the making,

they also usually allow the artist to take out progress that isn’t to his liking,

thereby creating opportunity for moving closer to perfection during the

process of making each work. Then again, there’s always the next piece,

for Olshansky!

Foxy Wool will be on view through December 4.