#textile-art

#textile-art

Through large-scale tapestries of fringed strips of fabric, Abdoulaye Konaté explores the contemporary relevance of ancient signs and symbols. The Malian artist began working with textiles in the 1990s, when it became clear to him how prevalent they are in our everyday lives, from clothing and home goods to tools and more. This early interest began what's become a research-driven artistic practice, and today, he layers long, stitched pieces of Bazin and Kente fabrics into dynamic, largely abstract works.

Báez's monumental 2021 painting Untitled (Colonization in America, Visual History Wall Map, Prepared by Civic Education Service) sold for $1,111,250, setting a new record for the Dominican-born artist whose work interrogates colonial histories through layers of archival maps, Caribbean symbolism, and swirly swaths of paint-in this case, densely rendered feathers. Brown's After the Alcatraz Swim #2 achieved $596,900, a benchmark for the Bay Area Figurative artist whose psychologically charged self-portrait draws from a near-fatal 1975 swim in San Francisco Bay.

"My practice exists in the tension between rest and labor, between the intimacy of touch and the vast systems that shape our world," says artist Malaika Temba. "Whether I am working on a small weaving or a large-scale installation, I am always asking what materials remember and who gets remembered through them." Merging digital and analog processes, Temba creates layered textile pieces in an exploration of migration, labor, gender, global trade, and daily life.

The faceless figure's cropped bob and black boots are the only commonality, as always-symmetrical wide-leg trousers or dresses vary widely. Through color, scale, and repetition, Saputra's hand-stitched characters also coordinate and complement one another. Some, like the Arak Arakan Sepi series-meaning "quiet procession" in Indonesian-are more abstract and bulbous, while others, like "ARTSUBS," depict more realistic outfits. Saputra draws on a background in graphic design and illustration, which she applies to her fiber compositions.

'The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.' This quote, attributed to Søren Kierkegaard, encapsulates the title's inspiration and installation's ethos, speaking to the titanic loss that comes from environmental degradation due to climate change. As art evokes emotion, it helps us humans visualize or appreciate the world from which we came, and indeed, where we might be headed.

The industrial-size device includes a computer interface for creating precise patterns, but he prefers to use it like a pencil and paper, doodling swirls directly onto ice-dyed velveteen. The dye is a recent addition to his process. "You go through these periods when the fabric does the talking or when the design does the talking," he tells me. Currently, the fabric is yelling.

Marie Watt's balance of technical precision and expansive vision melds in larger-than-life textile processes and multimedia explorations. Storywork centers stories from her Seneca Nation ancestry, pairing them with references to everything from Greco-Roman myth to Star Trek. The selection of narrative prints appears alongside a sculptural tin jingle cloud. Programming includes an October 2 performance by champion jingle dancer Acosia Red Elk and a campus native plant tour led by the Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge team on October 14.

Exploring transness through soft, quilted terrain, Waters of Body pairs works by Portland artists Yana Sternberger-Moyé, Molly Alloy, and Michael Espinoza with Transmissions Quilts Project, artist Cordy Joan's quilt-making initiative for trans and gender-queer people countrywide. The exhibition joins other interesting shows installed at PNCA: Portland Textile Month's Warp Speed: Contemporary Conversations in Fiber showcases vibrant, fuzzy fiber works from the former Museum of Contemporary Craft's collection, and Angelo Scott's Time-Based Art Festival installation.

Rachel Hayes transforms architectural spaces and natural landscapes into shifting compositions of color and movement with large-scale textile-based installations that are site-specific and vibrant.

Hayes uses color, translucency, and composition to radically reshape the way viewers experience architecture and nature through large-scale, site-specific installations.

I am a painter who uses the loom to paint, and I consider my palette and my words as part of my materials repertoire. My weavings feel spontaneous, but they are meticulously planned from composition to fiber choices.

"It is a very malleable material that reflects the current state of the natural environment, and the surrounding community and personal hand of the maker."