Emulate, Recreate, Translate, SDA International Exhibition in Print Fall 2025 Journal, Out Now!

October 13, 2025

Surface Design Association is excited to announce Emulate, Recreate, Translate SDA International Exhibition in Print, our Fall 2025 edition of Surface Design Journal. This year’s Exhibition in Print challenged artists to think about the ways fiber can be emulated, recreated and translated into other qualities and contexts. Whether that’s through metaphor or materiality, culture, language and more, this year’s EIP pushes what forms fiber can become from many different perspectives. Lauren Sinner, SDA Managing Editor & Co-Juror

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Here’s a preview of what you’ll discover:

Guest Juror Statement: Making Fiber Speak by Nirmal Raja: “Making art is an act of translation, of our inner lives and our outer worlds. It might be a reflection of the past, a projection into the future, or an articulation of the present. When we think of making as an act of translating, a whole, rich world filled with potential reveals itself. The artists that responded to this call have a varied, rich, layered and intimate understanding of translation.”

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Performing Fiber Award, Diana Baumbach: “In my current practice, I work intuitively with a variety of fibers to create wall hangings, objects and costumes. I am interested in how materials can be transformed from one kind to another: from fabric to paper, from hair to yarn, from object to photograph. By reconstructing materials, I can understand both the tactile world and my inner world in new ways. I embrace materials’ ability to carry meaning. I draw upon their histories and use them to tell my own story.”

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Material Exploration Award, Isabella Covert: “I force interactions between the body’s functions, sourced materials and medical apparatuses. Manipulated and contaminated by my body, these works act simply as byproducts of shed skin. Materials like latex and hair are left to decay against the porous skin and skeletal threshold. These bodies violate standard rules imposed upon materials, tampering with tactile relationships that promote rapid aging, cracking, discoloration and festering. They are bodies of infinite space confined within a space that will inevitably cause a decomposition cycle. They are bodies thrust into a process of ontogenesis in which nylon and metal may be all that remains.”

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Modern Meets Traditional Award, Lakshmi Madhavan: “My artistic practice is rooted in the traditional textile of kasavu, the gold-and-white handloom cloth native to Kerala. I have spent the past several years working intimately with the weaving community of Balaramapuram, one of the oldest kasavu handloom centres in South India. Through this long-term engagement, I’ve come to see the kasavu not only as a heritage textile but as a charged surface where histories of caste, gender, labour and identity collide. My work attempts to reconfigure this material beyond its symbolic function, imagining it as a living archive of the body, of memory and of transformation.”

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Nature of Translation Award, Amy Usdin: “Though speaking broadly to loss, longing and the dissonance of nostalgia, much of my work is autobiographical. When I began weaving on discarded nets, I’d been caring for elderly parents in protracted decline. I felt a parallel to the careful but imperfect tending of worn objects that had outlived their function. As I manipulate these nets through a personal lens, I consider my own changing relevance.”

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Guest Juror Award, Jeana Eve Klein: “By recreating/reinventing/resurrecting these images, I reflect on the dramatic evolution of vernacular photography and the impact thereon of digital and social media. Thirty years ago my grandparents used a camera loaded with film to document their travels. Every picture was precious and private, though certainly not perfect. This is in stark contrast to the common documentation of today, when every moment—even the most mundane—can be instantly recorded (and re-recorded, and re-re-recorded), edited, curated and publicly shared. I am pixelating the images through beads and making them larger than life, all for public display: essentially transforming the typical social media sharing of today into physical form.”

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Unconventional Materials Award, Lauren Comerato: “This body of work is both an investigation and reimagining of construction materials. What happens when I apply the fiber techniques passed down from my grandmothers to the industrial components of my father’s and brother’s trade? What stories surface when I spotlight the overlooked—an outlet cover or a wire nut—and recast them through the lens of craft? How can I weave my personal fascination with kitsch and overly adorned objects into my practice? Weaving and crochet become the dominant methods through which these worlds meet, creating new, hybrid forms.”

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Current Statement Award, Emiko Kuhs: “Using both digital and traditional tools, I have created quilted film stills that incorporate handcrafted elements while leveraging digital technology like machine embroidery and graphic design software. Even in these mechanized elements, there are traces of my hand in the digitization of each hand-drawn file, a reminder that a human being is behind their creation…I am drawn to quilting because it is a historically collaborative and political art form. Additionally, the art can be a marker of a specific time, place and identity. My existence is inherently political, and it would be a disservice to try to separate politics from my art. I am not imitating a film’s ideas with fabric; my work in quilting marks the time in which it was created.”

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This year’s EIP also has 22 Featured Artists included alongside the award winners: Anastasia Azure, Blair Martin Cahill, Shin-hee Chin, Kyoung Ae Cho, Lisa Cooreman, Rachael Segrest Cox, Ian Danner, Melissa Dorn, Helen Geglio, Precious Gyekye, AnnaBrooke Hill Greene, Laurel Izard, Mo Kelman, Fawzia Khan, melissa matson, Bobbi Meier, Hannah O’Hare Bennett, Joanna Rogers, Karen Searle, Lars Shimabukuro, Adrienne Sloane, and Madeline Thoman. Congrats to all our artists spotlighted in this lovely Journal!

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Outstanding Student Awards: Presented annually to students who have demonstrated excellence in fiber arts. This year, the SDA Education Committee selected four awardees to be featured in print: Claire Krienitz, Fiona Fan, Prisma Andrade, and Rutuja Pawase. The work of these artists embodied inventive and innovative use of technique, materials and concepts not only in fibers and textiles, but in printmaking, sculpture, and more. It is an honor for the Education Committee to be able to see student work, review it, and learn more about the personal and societal issues they are tackling through their work.

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Crafting Tomorrow: An SDA Small Group Show: Crafting Tomorrow (October 10–November 2, 2025) is organized in partnership with LA Artcore and Textile Arts LA and juried by Fafnir Adamites. Highlighting fiber and textile-based materials and techniques, including traditional and cross-disciplinary practices, experimental processes, and material innovation, this group exhibition showcases work from artists who are “crafting tomorrow.” Featuring the work of Ivy Laurel Anderson, Juan Gomez, Emily Hunt, Robert Mertens, and Sara Torgison. 

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To buy a copy of Emulate, Recreate, Translate, go to the SDA Marketplace, or you can check out a free digital sample on our SDA Journal page.