Amy Usdin
Length Behind, 2021
cotton, linen, silk, and wool on vintage horse fly net [52 x 18 x 8 inches]
Anita Bracalente
Lost River (Indiana), 2021
Perle cotton #12 Czech seed beads #11 knitted beads [H. 8 1/2 x L. 29 1/4]
Indiana has 87 miles of an underground river system, the head of which is a mere wet hole in a field. The short-sighted Indiana legislature rolled back EPA standards of the clean air and water safe guards.
Ruth Tabancay
Bleached, 2022
Yarn, needle caps and sheaths, vial caps, tubing caps, oxygen tubing, pins, styrofoam [36" x 40" x 6"]
Increasing ocean temperatures, a result of global warming, can be deadly for coral reefs. Instead of stunning colors, a skeleton is left behind. For Bleached, stylized coral reef structures, crocheted in neutral colors, are interspersed with imaginary organisms created from made from plastic medical waste. Three years ago, I received a lung transplant for worsening pulmonary disease. Over the course of my decade-long illness, I accumulated all kinds of plastic waste from home injections, home infusions, and many feet of oxygen tubing. My concern for the environment dictates that I eliminate plastics as much as possible from my life. However, I’m conflicted because using plastics that deliver medication essential to my health runs counter to my beliefs.
Elaine Longtemps
Trail of Tears/The Long Walk, 2014
Hand-painted rope, Liquitex polymer, digital printing on cotton fabric, glass teardrop beads, other beads, feathers [installed 54"H x 29"W x 43"D]
Emily Yurkevicz
1,461 Days, 2018 - 2021
Porcelain, enamel, stainless steel pins, time [8’ x 3’ (full installation); 0.25” x 4” x 3” (each piece)]
1,461 hand-built and dipped porcelain matchstick tally of each day of Trump’s presidency
Ann Coddington
albatross 8, 2020
Twined linen and discarded plastic [20 x 12 x 5]
Recently, I saw a picture of an albatross that was decomposing on the beach, the inside of its body filled with plastic bits. I decided to create a series of work that directly confronted the reality of my part in the plastic waste cycle. I created a woven vessel to contain plastic that I had collected over a month’s time, some mine, some found as I was walking. The woven vessel, like the body of the albatross, will most certainly decompose long before the plastic within, but perhaps by then we will have found a viable way to take responsibility for our waste. In addition, I also x-ray the forms to reveal the plastic hidden inside. What appears elegant, organic and pure, like the body of the albatross, hides discarded detritus within. In truth, I do not want to fill my art with plastic. But none of us actually wants to fill our creatures, our oceans, our planet with plastic; and yet, we are. I had to find a way to take responsibility for my waste, to bring this conversation to the forefront of my work.
Holly Wong
Quilt Suspension 3, 2023, Holly Wong
Silk, cotton and organza with LED lighting [5’H x 5’W x 1.5’D]
I am drawn to quilted or pieced fabrics as a proxy for the body. I choose to manipulate synthetic materials such as cellophane and dichroic film with natural fibers of silk and cotton, because of their transparent qualities that, when layered, remind me of my layered sense of my past as well as permeable separation between the living and the dead. There are many stories and fact becomes permeable. These works incorporate LED strip lighting interacts with the transparent quilt fabric. The linear element of the light is a kind of drawing for me as it fluidly moves through the quilt block structure. Moreover, this combination of ephemeral materials with LED strip lighting and diffusion film serves as a proxy for her mother’s spirit. The layers of pieced fabric are suspended over this light-spirit as a shroud or mourning cloth. Inspired by Chinese funeral customs, the quilt layers become burial blankets that are offered by the children of the deceased and layered upon their loved ones.
Sherry Saele
Fragility (What Remains), 2017
Ceramic, Pigment [13' X 28" x 4"]
Eszter Bornemisza
Quo Vadis, 2013
Chickenwire, paperclay. paperpulp selfmade of rush and sedge [120 x 70 x 100 cm]
While experimenting with distortion of cone forms shapes emerged, that started to look like humanoids: people abandoning a place, fighting their way forward or leaning against the wind with one of them in doubt.
Theda Sandiford
Beaded Braids: Double Dutch, 2023
Cider Six Packs and various single use bottle caps strung and knotted with blue and white polyurethane rope [55 x 72 x 8 in]
Throwback to when I wore my hair in braids ladened down with pony beads.
Laurel Izard
Tip Toeing Through a Dangerous Generation, 2023
Vintage baby blanket, cotton thread, fabric, and batting [39" x 35"]
Tip Toeing Through a Dangerous Generation is part of an ongoing series of quilts made from vintage baby blankets that contrast the images we surround children layered with contradictions in our modern American culture.
Mandy Pedigo
This Land, 2021
Cotton, linen and silk. [55" h x 47" w]
The fabric of the quilt contains the pages of my Master of Fine Arts thesis printed onto fabric, cut and re-pieced. The cutting and reassembly shift the readable text into a jumble both revealing and concealing the meaning. The quilting is done in white to subtly reveal the words This Land is My Land; This Land is Your Land in repeat. My thesis explored my journey through graduate school to explore how my hidden heritage impacted the art that made and the focus on finding home and building connection with nature. I uncovered a heritage of feeling dislocated and homesick that was passed down from my great grandparents to me. In the United States, we understand on a certain level that most of us are descended from immigrants, but we don’t know what that means. My own family came from Sweden and Finland to the US. The Finns came after many years of famine, lack of work and land, and conscription into the Russian army. It wasn’t a good time back home. When they left, it was for good and there were loved ones they never heard from again. When I hear the stories and the voices of current immigrants and refugees, I can’t help but think about my own family and what was given up to fit in. The quilt form is a very powerful object that already contains notions of home, family, and comfort. This work explores home, maps, directions, hidden stories, and searches for connection to a new country.
Caron Tabb
2021
Fabric, leather, yarn, thread, paper, ribbon, nylon, cardboard [Approximately 140 x 110 inches]
Like many the world over, the pandemic left me isolated from friends and family near and far. As a result, I decided I would pull my loved ones closer to me through my artwork. I began sourcing fabric swatches from people I know and care for around the world and started on an asymmetrical ever-growing quilting project. While I expected simply the swatches, each seemed to arrive with a story attached. I read of loved ones long gone, places frequented years ago, and family treasures. I was humbled and touched by the thought and care people gave to my request. People from as far as South Africa, England, Germany, Israel, and across the United States sent me cherished pieces of garments and heirlooms they had held onto for decades, even a lifetime: a one-hundred-year-old nightcap from the ‘old country’, a sixty-year-old baby bonnet, a swatch from a wedding dress worn over thirty years ago. The notes which arrived with each swatch hand-stitched together became the “backstory,” a glimpse of our shared humanity.
Alisa Banks
Yeene, 2019
Paper, book cloth, book board, silver chain, gold chain, thread, hair, color pencil, pigment prints, amber, aquamarine, onyx, metal, found objects [6.75” x 10” x 8.75; open: 13.15” x 10” x 8.75”]
Yeene is an ode to an invisible and significant life
Michele Heather Pollock
Map to an Unknown Location, 2022
Found metal, eco-dyed leftover papers, waxed linen, cotton embroidery thread, paper straws [11" x 9"]
While dealing with a Sclerodema diagnosis, which made my old ways of making impossible, I've been hand quilting, burning & embroidering paper that I eco-dye with local leaves. The intuitive quilts are fragile skins, maps to unknown places, the shapes of cells under the microscope. I combine these small quilts with metal objects rescued from the scrapyard, which are bent, broken, rusted and no longer able to perform their original uses.
Helen Geglio
Amulet Bundles for Teenage Drivers, 2022
Cotton, linen, found clothing, small objects, board book [10.5 x 27 x 1.5 installed]
These amulet bundles are wrapped meditations on motherhood. Worries and fears for our children are bundled up and tied, held tightly inside protective layers of cloth.
Sharon Webster
Tom Box, 2016
hand built cedar box, paper strips s of handwritten letter, photos, twine [12 in x 17 in x 7 in]
TOM BOX is inspired by my first love, Tommy Moon. His last name reflects his Native American heritage. From early high school until I left small- town Kentucky for college, I loved this young man for his sensitive nature, his smooth caramel skin and his eyes like honeycomb. Tommy was equal parts tough and vulnerable. (He chopped his motorcycle, but puked out the car door if we had a fight.) I chose cedar for the piece because of the smell of his bedroom where we listened to “The Doors” sing Riders On the Storm. He wrote me long letters when I moved up north, where he poured out his feelings and news of daily life. Reading his letters now, so much comes through between the lines. His soul and sadness. His tenderness. The loneliness of a life lived with few resources, opportunities or support. Tommy had run-ins with the law; he was a misfit. This beautiful, rebellious man came to symbolize the hardships and limitations that I was able – through random luck & a bit of privilege – to leave behind.
Katie Taylor
We Leave a Trace, 2019
Ink halo painting of antique lace [20” x 20”]
Visualising the absent present. Exploring how belongings change after the death of someone.
Wen Redmond
In the Warm, Black, 2022, Wen Redmond
Flashing tape collage, transfers & stitched text [6 x 6x.5]
Kevin Tracy
Variant 1, 2021
Aluminum foil, synthetic polymer paint, screws, graphite, sodium silicate [32in x 24in x 22in]
In a meditative repetitive act, aluminum foil is twisted into small packets that retain the immediacy of the hand. The pieces fit together seamlessly forming masses that take on many different forms and associations.
Jean Sredl
Apparition, 2018
Discharged Linen, Fabric paint, Distressed silk border, Machine and hand embroidery. [22 x 27]
A fleeting vision quickly appears and when I turn for a second look, rapidly gone; like an angel or ancient spirit stopping by to encourage, communicate or comfort. His edges are blurred but my senses are sharp as my dream remains a mystery.
