On Weaving

By presenting these techniques as a focal part of creative practice, exhibitions and related program activities highlight weaving as key to the continued history of textiles and foundational to fiber art as a contemporary art discipline. 

On Weaving engages nationally and internationally recognized artists who will be exhibiting, teaching, and talking about the processes and inspiration that feeds their practices. Of these artists, we have asked: what about weaving – woven structure, the freedom, constraint, complexity or simplicity of it – keeps you at the loom? We hope by engaging the broad sensibilities of weaving that the extraordinary works on exhibit will inspire our in-person and virtual community of appreciators, makers, scholars, students, professionals, and visitors to recognize the significant contributions of textiles and fiber arts to the vocabulary and discourse of contemporary art. 

The exhibition includes works that emerge from a simple frame loom or found object, to the complex structures of digital hand-jacquard weaving. Focus on woven structure is not just a physical aspect of the work, but is an expression of the way these artists think. Techniques employed reveal a great deal about motivation and creative problem solving. From loom assisted and controlled weaving to hand interlacing, from technology to anti-technology, from preserving tradition to innovations that amplify or defy it, from cultural to environmental to social influences—the labor intensive processes used in weaving carry myriad personal narratives, communicated by each artist through their featured works.