SDA Book Club – Women’s Work reviewed by Faith Hagenhofer
July 3, 2026
Women’s Work: From Feminine Arts to Feminist Art by Ferren Gipson
The core of Women’s Work is a chronology of change. This collective biography of 34 artists opens with a brief history of the quiltmakers of Gees Bend, who have been making useful, beautiful, abstract, color block quilts since the nineteenth century. It’s organized by artists’ birth year and includes wonderful photographs of both the artists and their work. The Book proceeds to showcase women artists working in fibers and textiles who have, through their work, changed the public’s perception of these materials. Using common materials, objects, and skills that are historically associated with domesticity, the included artists have created work that often challenge the original perceived and limited utility of fibers and textiles.
In organizing this survey of work, Gipson illustrates the emergence of feminist art over the 20th and into the 21st century. The subtitle—From Feminine Arts to Feminist Art—underscores that shift, though most of these women don’t identify as feminist artists themselves. Rather, they have, “Celebrate[d] the triumphs of cloth as a material for higher purpose and softness over hardness” (Dorothea Tanning, page 47); they have “rejected the idea that because some mediums had traditionally been utilized by women in domestic spaces they were any less artistically valid” (Miriam Shapiro, page 69). They elevated undervalued women’s labor through the use of textiles, quotidian imagery, and accessible materials. As Polly Apfelbaum said of her anti-monumental floor-placed, horizontally viewable pieces, [they are] “related to everyday imagery like clothes piled on the floor” (page 156).
There is an attempt at international representation, though most of the artists are either from the United States or Europe. Most, but not all, have had formal art education and some international recognition in such settings as the Venice Biennial. Inclusion in this collection isn’t limited solely to fiber artists—many also have printmaking or ceramic experience and skills. At the back of the book there is a list of an additional 108 artists to explore, along with their area of practice. Many artists on the list work in ceramics, which made me consider that a second volume devoted to them would be appropriate. The same chronological throughline and theme could be applied, looking at women’s associations with the skills and materials—food holders and food being central to domestic life—and the evolution of women’s involvement in the ceramic arts. That said, the reader of Women’s Work will undoubtedly encounter familiar names, but will also have the pleasure of being introduced to some artist they didn’t know before.
–Faith Hagenhofer
- Publisher: Frances Lincoln / The Quarto Group (buy it here)
- Date: July 2022
- ISBN: 978-0711264656
If you’ve read this book, leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Do you have a recommendation for a recent fiber-related book you think should be included in SDA’s Book Club? Email SDA’s Managing Editor, Lauren Sinner, to let her know!
