Spring Arts - Galleries: Fiber and other marvelous media

If fiber art still brings your mom's macrame to mind, rather than the awesome textile sculptures of Sheila Hicks or Nick Cave, you've clearly not been getting enough of it. So plan to hang out in some galleries and museums when FiberPhiladelphia 2012, this year's iteration of the biennial international and regional festival, takes over the city in March and April with exhibitions of fiber/textile art planned for more than 40 venues.

Also this spring, painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, and installation are everywhere in Philadelphia galleries in equal measure, while group shows, formerly relegated to summer and recessions, have become the main event.

- Edith Newhall, who writes about galleries for The Inquirer

Spring Arts - Galleries:

FiberPhiladelphia 2012 (Multiple venues, March 2 to April 30) For an overview of fiber art as cutting-edge contemporary art and fiber and textiles still firmly (and blissfully) rooted in craft, see "A Sense of Place" at the Philadelphia Art Alliance (Feb. 2 to April 8), Wexler Gallery's "Narrative Thread" (March 2 to April 28), Snyderman-Works Gallery's Eighth International Fiber Biennial (March 2 to April 28), and "Outside/Inside the Box" in the Crane Arts Building's Icebox Project Space (March 2 to April 15). (www.fiberphiladelphia.org)

Mia Rosenthal/Sharka Hyland

(Gallery Joe, March 2 to April 21) Rosenthal is showing new drawings in homage to the Hudson River School in her signature doodle style; Hyland's pencil-drawn reproductions of writings from literary works are similarly carefully wrought. (215-592-7752; www.galleryjoe.com)

Emmet Gowin (Swarthmore College's List Gallery, Feb. 28 to April 1) The photographer known for his images of his own intimate domestic life and of the human impact on the landscape - and who is a visiting artist at Swarthmore College - will have a survey of his family portraits, aerial views of landscapes, and recent images shot in Panama. (610-328-7811 or www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/art/Gallery)

A Closer Look 8 (Arcadia University Art Gallery, Feb. 28 to April 22) Adelina Vlas, an assistant curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has organized this show of drawings by five artists - Dechemia (Isobel Sollenberger and John Gibbons), Sebastien Leclercq, Josh Shaddock, and Brent Wahl. (215-572-2131 or www.arcadia.edu/gallery).