Flora, Fauna & Entrails

I'm excited to announce the inaugural exhibit of my Fiber Forms collection and work here in our new home state of Louisiana. The family and I will be attending the opening this weekend so if you're in the New Orleans area please stop by, take a gander at all the fiber art and say hello!

Fabric and thread are inextricably bound to our everyday lives. Flora, Fauna, and Entrails brings together artists using fibers in their practice to explore the beauty and fragility of the nature around them. Flora, Fauna, and Entrails is Antenna’s fourth exhibition exploring the work of artists that expand on the potential of fiber in contemporary art practices while still being steeped in craft traditions.

 Antenna presents:
Flora, Fauna, and Entrails
 3718 St. Claude St, New Orleans
On view: April 8 – May 7, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday April 8, 6-10pm
Daily hours: Tuesday through Sunday 12-5 

Featuring artists: Linda Beach, Raina Benoit, Raluca Iancu, Gina Phillips, and Suzanna Scott.

Playing With Scissors

Thought I'd share a few images of my Bound Scissors out in the wild. Playing with scissors is a safe activity as long as they're bound and stitched up tight! I'm pleased that this interactive piece has now been exhibited in three venues, a year ago in Touch: Interactive Craft, this past January in Material As Medium, and this weekend as part of Play, an all media exhibition at the SAA Collective in Springfield, Illinois. 

The exhibition Play was juried by Bob Dixon, an ceramicist and retired professor from Benedictine University. Play is the spontaneous, unstructured time found to foster creativity and problem-solving skills. As we grow up we tend to trivialize play and relegate it to childhood, but it’s an important element of life at any age. The exhibit features work not only about play in the traditional sense, but also the idea of being in the moment, of inspiring wonder, of invoking your natural curiosity. The viewers are encouraged to interact and play with many of the pieces on exhibit.

PLAY: All Media Exhibition

SAA Collective / H.D. Smith Gallery / Springfield, IL

March 10 - 31, 2017 

Opening reception March 11 / 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Participating artists: Bruce Alves, Lex Archibald, Piety Choi, Betsy Dollar, Lauren Feret, Cathy Ganschinietz, John Hayes, Tessa Martinez, Corrin Smithson McWhirter, Beth Rodgers, Suzanna Scott

Thank you to all of you who've shared your images of Bound Scissors via social media. #boundscissorproject

 

Image by Adele Stuckey

Image by Leslie Mounaime

Image by Katie Riggs

Image by Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts

Image by Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts

Crazy Quilts

Last summer I picked up a pile of unfinished crazy quilt squares at the flea market. A bit musty and stained, they'd definitely seen a few idle decades. I decided to emphasize the aged backsides of these patchwork squares by carefully slicing into them to expose their insides. The coloring on the reverse is subtle; stains are visible, and you can trace the map-like stitches where each piece has been quilted. Each scar that I add is carefully marked, cut and stitched into place with black thread. Fresh wounds are now scattered among the hints of stitches left by another pair of laboring hands years ago.