Surface Design Association is excited to announce The Fusion of Fiber Arts, Fashion & Design: SDA International Exhibition in Print, our Fall 2022 edition of Surface Design Journal. This year’s International Exhibition in Print pushed artists to explore the various ways fusion as a concept can be expressed and incorporated into fashion and fiber art. …

My work reflects on the relationship between human existence and coexistence within nature, which is a mutualistic relationship with mankind. Humans and nature are indispensable and during this era of Covid-19, space and artwork about how we return to nature are being practiced and actively created. My work combines and materializes the connection between humans …

The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives by Barbara Burman & Ariane Fennetaux I finished this book while having to pack a carry-on bag for a weekend away, and wished I had the sartorial accessories of pockets, as discussed in this book. They would have been very handy for holding my book, headphones, knitting …

What does it mean to call oneself a fiber artist? When I transitioned to that title, after years of being a textile artist, I didn’t know how relatively recent the term “fiber art” was coined—the 1950s. It’s not that fiber art didn’t exist before then, but pieces that were made through weaving, knitting, crocheting, quilting, …

Living in the isolation of the pandemic has caused a shift in my impulse to make–-my conceptual underpinnings and the imagery I employ reflect my current sense of absence and presence. Missing from my days is a consistent active engagement with others; present in my days is an increased awareness of my immediate environment. The …

The Southwest region of the United States stretches across an expansive landscape that ranges from a variety of soaring monoliths of red sandstone pinnacles to lush snow capped mountains. The high desert plateau repetitively cracks open to reveal cavernous canyons and hidden spring-fed creeks. The overwhelmingly gorgeous scenery combines with the powerful presence of indigenous …

Follow the Flock: How Sheep Shaped Human Civilization by Sally Coulthard Among the many book reviewers for Surface Design Journal, I am on the fiber beat. I continue to be fascinated by the physical materials and processes that form the foundation of all textiles and the books written about them. Further, I am on the …

It’s no surprise that responses to Covid-19 have been as numerous and diverse as we are individual. Interestingly, many artists I’ve spoken to have found a silver lining in the hours and days of uninterrupted solitude the pandemic gave them to work. I count myself among that fortunate contingent. More than 15 months ago, SDA …

I make art to learn and understand what I am thinking and feeling. While it is always an internal investigation, I am engaged with the world and culture around me. There is much to horrify me: violence at home and abroad, global climate crisis, racism, rapacious capitalism and more. In  response, I began to collect …

Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser Organized by fiber type, Worn is absolutely a history of clothing, but to be more precise, a history of its manufacture, and the labor therein. These intersections allow Thanhauser to explore firsthand this attribute of being human—our need for clothing and what it means for those …