WPCA_Future Fibers Catalog 2024

January 19 - March 1, 2024 Curated by Mike Flanagan, Kim Storage and Xela Garcia

FEATURED ARTISTS Mary Bero Kyoung Ae Cho Lucero Gallegos Sheila Held Sharon Kerry-Harlan Linda Marcus Heidi Parkes Liz Whitney Quisgard Thomas Colton Romero Maria Amalia Wood

Future Fibers explores the rich textures and narratives woven by 10 contemporary fiber artists that are pushing the boundaries of fiber arts.

Mary Bero maryberoart.com toryfolliard.com We can be prisoners of those who make up categories. They are usually never the “doers” but the parasite on the host - they have no guts! Making art takes guts. My intention is to shatter perceptions by making the best art possible, using whatever media is suggested by the idea.

Couple with Iris, 2016-17

Kyoung Ae Cho kyoungaecho.com

Worn, 2022 (detail)

Gathering and collecting objects / materials are very important parts of my work process. Because I believe my works are the outcome of the collaboration between those objects / materials and I, and that collaboration starts from that moment. In the process I examine nature to understand its language through shape, pattern, color, texture, scale and its changes. My works are produced as a result of conversation between nature and I. Through this process, I want to have my work carry the beauty and the power that I see and feel in nature.

Lucero Gallegos @tiolulu.art.design

An experimentation of hand rendered type in the form of embroidery. Using Spanish curses as my base, I try to reflect through the thread on how tone can change a sentence.

Tu Puta Madre, 2023

Thomas Colton Romero @th.romer Through the layering of color and line, the possibilities of time and space begin to unravel and what is viewed is something unique to each person. These objects can reveal moments of ourselves, our true selves, pure, and of presence.

What can these moments of potential bring to your everyday life when looking at your surroundings? Where does it take you? What does it show you? And how can these affect the way you engage with your own world? For within these fibers are intimate and personal moments waiting to be released.

CC003, 2023

Sharon Kerry-Harlan @portraitsocietygallery sharonkerryharlan.com My artwork tells stories: preserving the rusted outlines of industrial farming equipment, repurposing abstract photographic shapes in paint designs, and presenting large-scale Black human faces as fabric patterns. I manipulate fabric and paper ephemera via rust dying, discharge dying, screen printing, and painting on large swaths, then later tear, re-sew, and arrange the pieces, along with painted imagery and found objects, into giant pictorial configurations.

Urban Chatter, 2010 Courtesy of Portrait Society Gallery

Linda Marcus www.lindamarcusart.com

Sleep on it, 2019

The most interesting stories, I believe, are found at the in-betweens, with the collision of materials and techniques amid history, personal story, cultural context, form, and function. For me fibers never let go of their history, even as they are cut, stitched, pleated, dyed and hemmed into surprising new shapes. It’s a common thread in my work along with expanding boundaries of my discipline and learning the unique stories of each material I pair the fiber with.

Heidi Parkes www.heidiparkes.com @heidi.parkes

The thread and fabric scraps that accumulate as residual proof of my repeated efforts reveal the passing of time. I piece these materials with minimal interference so the viewer might sift through the shapes like a detective- or even an archaeologist.

My actions are often guided by whims and physical practicalities: the quilts yield to fit my life as they are made, revealing my circumstances, and often function as a diary.

Meuse, Pandemic, Invisible, Sweetheart, 2020

Liz Whitney Quisgard www.lizquisgard.com

My goal is to surprise and engage the mind by seducing the eye.

Toward that end, I reply on pattern. The term decorative has been applied to my work – most often in a negative sense. But that’s okay with me, for some the most important art is essentially Lots of Circles, 2017 decorative: Islamic rugs; Greek Courtesy of the Crossman Gallery, UW-Whitewater column capitals; Navajo textiles; Byzantine mosaics; Baroque architectural embellishments…. and so forth.

Sheila Held

sheilaheldtapestries.com www.thegreengallery.biz

In my imagery, I attempt to access the point where magic, science, religion, art and nature intersect. A conjuction of oppsites, a complementarity (both this and that), is achieved, in the hope of narrowing the gap between the ideal and the practical. Through a density of information, I strive to initiate a dialogue with my audience and to speak to a variety of interpretations.

Adam and Eve Dream of Revisiting the Apple (From the Dreamer series), 2023 Courtesy of The Green Gallery

Maria Amalia Wood Soñé Una Milpa Party https://youtu.be/mm0BGl5PCrE?si=QnHn7d5P2_ FN0UPV

Manchas / Stains (detail), 2018

www.unamilpa.com www.mariaamalia.com @mariaamaliawood

Soñé una Milpa (I dreamed of a Milpa) is a collaborative art project that acknowledges and celebrates the important, though often hidden experience of Latina immigrant women. During the summer of 2017, artists J. Leigh Garcia and Maria Amalia Wood interviewed ten Latina immigrant women from the Madison, WI community. After being invited into these women’s homes, Leigh and Maria Amalia were treated to corn-based meals from each woman’s home country while listening to the women share their stories. These meaningful conversations inspired a body of artwork informed by the women’s narratives.