This fall, the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn will present a nationally significant exhibition exploring the practice of textile printing, “Beyond the Surface: Contemporary Artists and Printed Textiles.”
This is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on printed textiles since the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery’s 1978 exhibition “Printed, Painted, and Dyed: The New Fabric Surface.”
The exhibition is curated by Caroline Kipp and features eight contemporary artists at different stages of their careers: Danielle Andress, Nancy Crow, Emily Dormier, Sarah Fairchild, Letitia Huckaby, Krystle Lemonias, Stephanie Santana and Gerri Spilka.
“This exhibition offers a long-overdue look at the interplay between textiles and print and how it has influenced contemporary artists,” said Schweinfurth’s Executive Director Donna Lamb. “We are delighted to present this work as part of our long tradition of supporting textile artists.”
Each artist in Beyond the Surface explores the nuances of their conceptual and material concerns, contributing significantly to an exhibition-wide dialogue about the field of printed textiles as a comprehensive form of contemporary artistic practice.
Danielle Andress, “Sierra,” 2023. Handwoven polyester thread with dye sublimation printing.Provided image
- Danielle Andres of Chicago, IL, prints images from desktop screensavers onto handmade weavings to emphasize that the “real” and the “digital” are human inventions that continually feed into each other. Her landscapes and assemblages explore people’s relationships with nature, architecture, and everyday objects.
- Nancy Crow of Baltimore, Ohio, has been a leading artist in contemporary quilt art since the 1970s. In her recent work, she transforms monoprints into layered quilt drawings on fabric that she calls “self-portraits.” Her series captures the energy and immediacy of traditional draftsmanship, transforming her drawings on fabric into layered, printed quilts that vibrate with visual tension.
- Emily Dormier of Chicago, IL, explores memory decay and the alteration of perception by creating large-scale digital scans in which she screenprints, scans, and reprints an image over and over again, introducing and highlighting errors and digitization each time. Her screenprinting creates layers of images and visual depth that evoke the creation and preservation of memories during times of heightened emotion or trauma.
- Sarah Fairchild of Queens, NY, combines painting, screen printing, collage, foil, flocking and crystals on fabric to depict common weeds and flowers as a commentary on nature. Her ornamented prints glow in fluorescent colors and glitter with glittering crystals and metallic foils to blur the lines between what is considered “natural” and “artificial.”
- Letitia Huckaby of Fort Worth, Texas, prints images of people, places and events on cotton fabric, some already printed, with a focus on history, culture and storytelling. Huckaby uses cotton to symbolize her connection to her cultural heritage and the resilience of community and care in the lives of African Americans in the face of the ongoing legacy of oppression in the United States.
- Krystle Lemonias of Phillipsburg, New Jersey, uses old clothing, bedsheets, diapers, and other materials to create portraits or assemblages that reference mammy stereotypes. Her work examines the essential role that women’s domestic labor plays in society and how these occupations are sites of negotiation between class, gender, race, and economic inequality.
- Stephanie Santana of Brooklyn, New York, layers hand-printed images and patterns to understand lineage and the spaces between memory, imagination, and material evidence of Black life.
- Gerri Spilka of Philadelphia, PA uses bold colors and dynamic shapes to bring together quilting and modern abstraction, creating images that reflect the duality of urban existence as both anonymous and a place of community and the urban landscape as both sleek and gritty.
Krystle Lemonias, “My husband can eat, eeh; put that in the trash,” 2021. Baby clothing, Lara Bar packaging, relief print on upholstery fabric.Provided image
The exhibition will be on view at the Schweinfurth Art Center from August 31 to October 20, 2024. Curator Caroline Kipp will lead a panel discussion with some of the exhibiting artists at 3 p.m., followed by an opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
Kipp will also participate in an online textile conversation on September 4. The weekly online series is organized by the International Quilt Museum, the Quilt Alliance, SAQA and the Surface Design Association.
In addition to the exhibition, two textile workshops for adults and a youth course with a focus on printed textiles are planned in Schweinfurth:
- Syracuse artist Ellen M. Blalock will lead a three-day workshop titled “The Layered Surface: Fusions, Transparency, and Photographs” from August 30 to September 1, 2024. Participants will explore different methods of using photographs and layering fabrics and nonwovens. They will experiment with drawing, painting, and sewing images incorporated into fabric and learn how to incorporate them into fiber pieces.
- Instructor Madeline Bartley Gambacorta will introduce the art of printing through repeated patterns in a two-day workshop titled ‘Patterns on Fabric’ on September 21 and 22, 2024. Participants will focus on textile design to develop skills and explore combinations in colour, line and shape through block printing, handmade stencils and simple embroidery on fabric.
Students ages 7-11 can enroll in a 6-week after-school arts program called “See What You Can Sew! Machine Sewing and Printed Textiles,” which meets every Wednesday afternoon from September 11-October 16.
Students will use sewing machines, learn different sewing techniques, and even design their own fabrics. Projects include pillowcases, lined tote bags, block printing on fabric, and a collaborative quilting project.
Further information and registration for the two workshops can be found on the Schweinfurth website at https://schweinfurthartcenter.org/studio-schweinfurth/.
Information and registration for the Art After School program can be found at https://schweinfurthartcenter.org/youth-classes/.
The exhibition is curated by Caroline Kipp and sponsored by the Coby Foundation, the Further Foundation – a program of the JM Kaplan Fund, the Nelson B. Delavan Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
