Join me at SDA 2024 Conference – Parallel Play

Exploring the Intersection of Individual Artistic Vision and Group Creativity

January 27 – February 3, 2024


How does the synergy of collective creativity influence your artistic approach? In what ways do you derive inspiration from your creative community?

SDA’s upcoming online conference in 2024, titled “Parallel Play,” aspires to construct a communal environment where the confluence of individual artistic perspectives and collaborative creativity can be thoroughly explored.

Engage with fellow creators to investigate the transformative power of cross-disciplinary interactions, diverse interpretations, and shared discoveries in shaping innovative thought processes.

Immerse yourself in a week-long experience featuring presentations by esteemed speakers Ruth E. Carter and Nnenna Okore, accompanied by over 15 hours of diverse programming.

I will be participating as the conference as Artist in Residence with open studio hours on

  • Monday January 29, 2pm ET
  • Thursday February 1, 2pm ET

Please register through SDA’s website. The conference will be held over Zoom and will be recorded and available to attendees until the end of March 2024. 

Safekeeping Closing This Week

Surface Design Association’s Safekeeping

Exhibition Dates: June 2- July 23

Textile Talk Virtual Program – June 21, 2023

Location: 108 Contemporary; 108 E Reconciliation Way Tulsa OK

What happens when vintage silk ties and woven onto a metal dress form and adorned with a zip tie blanket tunic… protection from the patriarchy.

Safe Keeping Online Gallery

Held in partnership with 108|ContemporarySafekeeping, SDA’s 2023 member exhibition, celebrates diverse works that push the evolution of textiles through the use of color, design, process, material, and concept. Juror Anita Fields, selected 42 artworks from more than 375 submissions. From zip ties (thats me!) to native prairie grasses, the exhibition incorporates a stunning range of materials to explore the concept of “safekeeping.” There are 40 artists included in the exhibition representing 26 states across the U.S. as well as three international artists.

See the show Online HERE

If you are in Tulsa OK, the exhibition is on display at 108 Contemporary; 108 E. Reconciliation WayTulsa, OK through July 23, 2023.

I am so grateful to have my bottlecap pony bead braids included in Surface Design Association Spring 2023 online exhibition. Take a look at all the fantastic work included in the show.

Curator Statement

Afterlives, our Spring 2023 Selections Online Exhibition, features artists who consider an artwork’s lifespan before and beyond the moment of creation. Whether material or conceptual, their artistic transformations foreground lived experiences including migration, childhood, disability, and climate anxiety. These artists pull us in close and invite us to connect through shared identities or empathize with those outside our own.

Destini Ross (she/they), Guest Curator


June Exhibitions & Beyond

NEW THIS MONTH

Surface Design: Safekeeping

Exhibition Dates: June 2- July 23

Textile Talk Virtual Program – June 21, 2023

Location: 108 Contemporary; 108 E Reconciliation Way Tulsa OK

Free Your Mind@ MAFA 2023 Conference

Exhibition Dates: June 22- June 25, 2023

Location: Millersville University, Millersville, PA

ONGOING

Each One Teach One: Preserving the Legacy in Perpetuity 

Exhibition Dates: March 17 – August 27, 2023

Location: The Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Road Morristown, NJ

Triggered, Truth & Transformation @ Wa Na Wari

Exhibition Dates: April 22, 2023- July 17, 2023

Location: Wa Na Wari, 911 24th Avenue, Seattle WA 

For Venus & Serena @ Governors Island

Exhibition Dates: May 5- October 2023

Location: Art Crawl Harlem, 406B Colonels Row, Governors Island, New York NY

Black Art in the Sun

Exhibition Dates: May 15- August 15

Location: Atrium Gallery; 10 Court Street, Morristown NJ

Afterlives – SDA’s Spring 2023 Selections Online Exhibition

Exhibition Dates: May 19-June 30

See it HERE

UPCOMING

Triggered, Truth & Transformation @ The Lab

Exhibition Dates: July 1, 2023- September 17, 2023   

Location: The Lab at Krasl Art Center.  707 Lake Blvd, St Joseph, MI

Excellence In Fibers

Exhibition Dates:August 23, 2023 – January 7, 2024.

Location: San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles; 520 S First St, San Jose, CA

SDA’s Safekeeping

I am so pleased that Suit of Armor was selected for SDA’s Safekeeping Exhibition juried by Anita Fields at the 108|Contemporary in Tulsa from June 2 – July 23, 2023.

Surface Design Association’s Safekeeping

Exhibition Dates: June 2- July 23

Textile Talk Virtual Program – June 21, 2023

Location: 108 Contemporary; 108 E Reconciliation Way Tulsa OK

What happens when vintage silk ties and woven onto a metal dress form and adorned with a zip tie blanket tunic… protection from the patriarchy.

SDA’s Forecast/Recast

The online exhibition page and gallery is now live!

Forecast//Recast brings together artists and artworks that explore ideas of predicting, reshaping, and re-predicting — works that offer a glimpse of possible futures, reexamine historical narratives, shed light on needed social and ecological interventions, and bend inquiry towards new aims to reframe the way we view the world.

Highlighting fiber and textile-based materials and techniques, cross-disciplinary practices, experimental processes, and material innovation, this exhibition prompts a reshaping of the future with works that predict our current trajectories, cast a new gaze on the past, and revise what is to come.

(EM)power (EM)brace (EM)body

I am excited to share that my work Corporate Crossroads Jail Net has been selected for Surface Designs Associations online exhibit (EM)power (EM)brace (EM)body.

(EM)power (EM)brace (EM)body explores concepts of bodies from social, political, and psychological points of view, considering the body as a site for liberation, reclamation, and/or empowerment. The artwork featured interrogates themes from body autonomy to traditional constructions of beauty and gender, whether deeply personal and/or challenging, dismantling, and speaking to larger societal structures. 

– Curator Katayoun Bahrami

Life at the Crossroads

Inspired By… Machine Dazzle

One of the best things about Surface Design is their TEXTILE TALK series.

Textile Talks features weekly presentations and panel discussions from the International Quilt Museum, Quilt Alliance, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Studio Art Quilt Associates, and Surface Design Association.

This episode highlights the themes, objects, and extravagant style of the exhibition Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle currently on view at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.

The exhibition is a solo presentation of the genre-defying artist Matthew Flower, better known as Machine Dazzle. A provocateur commanding an expanded repertoire of costume design, stagecraft, performance, and music, he is also a virtuoso practitioner of the visual language of queer maximalism.

Elissa Auther, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and the William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, examine the ways in which Machine Dazzle counters the prejudices of high culture and transforms bodies through sculptural materials and ornamentation. SDA board member, Michael Sylvan Robinson moderates.

Fabulous Surfaces: Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle (MAD Museum and SDA)

High Praise for Blackty Black Blanket

I’ve been tickled pink by the reception of Blackty Black Blanket has been getting.

It was selected to appear in Surface Design Journal’s Seventh Annual International Exhibition in Print: The Fusion of Fiber Arts, Fashion & Design is month.

And was also juried into Fiber Art Now’s eighth annual Excellence In Fibers exhibition.

Juror Kate Irvin, Curator and Department Head, Costume and Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Art Museum reviewed 1300 artworks and selected Blackty Black Blanket for the winter issue of Fiber Art Now to be released in January 2023. The work is also eligible for the onsite exhibition at San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, August 23, 2023 through January 4, 2024.

None of this would be possible without the stellar photos of my work by April Tracy. Thank you April for elevating my vision.