Making A Place

Artist Bio

Sarah Ann Austin, b.Flint, MI. BFA University of Michigan and MFA University of Alabama. Sarah has taught at various universities and colleges before leaving academia and now working in her home studio in Raleigh alongside her three kids.

Sarah Ann runs her own business, Legacy Prints and Paper and has recently been deemed a non-profit in Raleigh and surrounding areas as a pop up shop and arts education center displaying items all being made by her.

During the last 20 years she’s worked with Printmaker and Papermaker Steve Miller extensively learning paper science and the beautiful tradition of handpapermaking. Her work has been shown nationally at Ogden Musuem of Art, Detroit Institute for Art, Birmingham Musuem of Art, and Oklahoma Art Musuem along with many more solo and group exhibitions in Photography, papermaking, and book and fiber arts.

Artist Statement

My work is heavily influenced by my relationships with my late grandmothers, my ancestors, or my ‘Kindred’ as I call them. I discovered quilting three years ago at age twenty after learning that quilting may have been used in the underground railroad to aid slaves to freedom. When I first told my grandfather about my sewing, I learned he had quilts and fabric from my late grandmother after she passed away. She was a quilter in the 1970s while living in Georgia and learned to sew by watching her own mother. A few days later, my mother and I drove to Georgia and were surprised to find barrels full of my grandmother’s unfinished quilts as well as used and unused fabrics. I was stunned. It was a sign that my grandmothers were alive within me, guiding me all along. 

Over time, I have taught myself a process of improvisational quilting to physically connect to my grandmother and the practices of my women ancestors. By incorporating the very fabrics and unfinished quilts she touched and sewed herself, my practice becomes a space to stitch together the stories and memories of black women across generations. My work tells the story of a black woman’s journey to find herself. My figures are representations of me and the women around me. Through them, I construct stories of our own blackness, femininity and sexuality beyond the violence and hyper sexualization that we face as Black women in a colonized world. My Kindred who have lived through slavery and Jim Crow directly aid me in the process of making while simultaneously guiding me on my own path of womanhood. The figures within my work are women living in comfortable environments where they may reveal their authentic self. They are Black women, often partially or fully nude, who take ownership of their bodies and refuse to be controlled by imposed standards of race, gender or sexuality. Guided by the Kindred, both myself and my figures may find our paths to our true selves, imagining who we may have been without the interference of colonization.

Artist’s Statement

“As a fiber artist, my practice is rooted in the concept of scavenging, then salvaging fabric remnants, heirloom fabrics, abandoned, discarded materials and objects, and reassembling them in an ongoing cycle of deconstruction / construction. In Aztec culture there is a myth that the gods would create the universe, undo it, to later built it and mess it up all over again. This way of thinking suits my life and the way I approach art making.

I am a native of Uruguay, and as an immigrant adaptation is constant, as is the exercise of comparing economies, privileges, struggles, haves and have nots. This has led me to the study of three big themes that I feel are interconnected with each other, migration, the effects of climate change and the meaning of borders.

The employment of discarded materials, broken or otherwise neglected objects, plastic, textile, and marine debris, all in their cracked, worn-out form speak to me of the dispossessed, the outsider, the misfit. The language of junk is also a metaphor not only to what we leave behind, deemed unwanted, but also for people who are devalued, the often-invisible immigrant or the undocumented. Salvaging these random objects and materials becomes an allegory for redeeming the socially disenfranchised and a testimony to the cruelty of capricious and repressive socio-economic powers. This reconstructing effort is also a direct response to our society of consumerism and convenience that glorifies the concept of “new”. The selected, random objects, castoffs of our industrialized society, are reassembled to create objects that weave stories, that speak of the user, referencing and reverencing domesticity, our shared humanity, embracing the value of ritual and identity and honoring our capacity to make something beautiful out of the dirt and rubble. 

Emulating nature, in the way a crack will be filled slowly and tediously by moss, pieces appear precarious and vulnerable, yet intricately and laboriously assembled, paying homage to the careful, loving constructions created by people in refugee camps, and impoverished areas around the world. The many threads, yarns and ropes employed to connect its many parts, a symbol to the interconnectedness of natural systems, human and otherwise.

Responding to materials that are in my immediate surroundings – a discarded metal cloth-hanger, a piece of electric wire, a bottle cap, a plastic bag, all mundane materials from our everyday life- stitching them together, wrapping them with yarn, tying them, always employing the hands as primary tool. The mark left by the hand as a form of footprint that evokes links to the past, that speaks of our resilience and resourcefulness. It is this ancestral way of making that imbues the pieces with familiarity and intimacy, a sense of fragility and poetry which is lost in this era of advanced technology and efficiency. The chosen methods for making, using hand stitching, hand wrapping, rope making, knotting; all these hand crafts being inevitably slow, tedious and inefficient; maybe seen as a form of resistance to the values imposed by our current modern society, always pushing us to perform more, faster and more efficiently.

The process of combining such odd materials, placing a hard heavy object, next to a light supple piece of fabric; tying it, stitching, using ropes and nets to wrap it together, imbues the pieces with a sense of fragility, but they also appear like real life-size constructions that suggest walls and separations, barriers or shelters. In other pieces a tattered rug, has giant cut outs, making it appear like the hide of an animal, but its fleshy tone suggests human skin. Materials are assembled in the way of articulated hides, or skeins, hanging them with open wounds that reflect the ghost of the wearer or the inhabitant. Ropes and nets are created out of repurposed plastic and fabric to connect the many parts of a piece, to keep it together from falling apart. The wrapping is also a metaphor for human intervention in nature, often serving as both a protection and a trap. The nets and ropes suggesting the immanent presence of water, its colossal force, the silence of its presence forever within us. We are 70% water too after all and it is from water we come into this world.

The conversation that emerges relates to the multi-fold meanings of thresholds, borders, and fences both natural and man-made, the liminal space that exists between them, as well as implying divisions between, the rich and the poor, developed and underdeveloped, the rich north and the global south, and many others. 

Ultimately, the goal is to provide hope, to remind us of our strength, our resilience, our capacity for change, our resourcefulness, and the power of nature over man to erase all borders.”

Artist Bio

Patrizia Ferreira is a fiber artist whose work incorporates thread, yarn, fabric remnants, found and heirloom fabrics, as well as a variety of repurposed materials. A special focus is given to plastics which are an emblematic material in many of her pieces. Her pieces can be best described as sculptural embroidered paintings that defy the two dimensions usually ubiquitous to textiles.

Her pieces are in great part influenced by her native country of Uruguay, as well as her immigrant experience and being a woman.

Many of her pieces which evoke bucolic, tropical, exuberant lands of abundance and bounty best express her feelings of displacement, of otherness. In her work plants grow naturally, effortlessly, in what appears to be their natural habitats. Patrizia likens herself to a tree which has been cut at the roots, then transplanted to a foreign land. Never quite fully adapted, never quite fitting in. Issues of remembrance and identity take center stage in her recent work. Pieces appear fragmented, torn, frayed, depicting the obvious, inevitable passage of time. A piece made of many disconnected parts. An analogy for how she feels. Made of many broken, fragmented pieces – yet, strongly rooted, undeniably human.

Her tedious, stubborn use of thread and stitch speaks to the resilience of women of all eras, quietly making that which is essential, but which society yet continues to overlook and ignore.

Patrizia Ferreira received a bachelor degree in textile design from the Institute of Industrial Design in Montevideo, Uruguay and a Master of Science degree in textile design for prints from Philadelphia University (now Thomas Jefferson University) . She is an artist and educator working in Cary, NC.

Artist Bio

Courtney Lockemer is an artist and designer who works in fashion, textiles, photography, video, and performance. She is the executive director of Piedmont Fibershed, a nonprofit dedicated to building a sustainable fiber and textile economy in central North Carolina and surrounding regions. In this role, she collaborates with farmers, makers, manufacturers, researchers, community leaders, and others to build a soil-to-soil, regionally-based textile ecosystem.

Her past work experiences include developing production-scale natural dye services for TS Designs in Burlington, NC, and operating a small business designing and making sustainable women’s clothing. She is particularly interested in working with locally-available dye plants. Courtney has a Master of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a bachelor’s degree in English and a certificate in Visual Art from Princeton University.

Artist’s Statement

My artistic practice is centered on the principles of tactility, sustainability, and functionality. I am fascinated by the tactile nature of textiles and their practical purpose in our daily lives. I work exclusively with natural fibers, and seek out sustainably grown, processed and dyed yarn wherever I can. Each piece I create is meticulously woven from countless individual strands of yarn on mechanical floor looms. I like exploring color and texture to bring my cloth to life, giving it beauty as well as purpose (or sometimes beauty IS the purpose). My goal is to evoke a desire to engage with my art; I want you to feel compelled to touch and experience the texture of my fabrics.

Artist Bio

Kelly Walsh is a hand weaver living and working in Durham, North Carolina. She worked as a web developer for years before deciding to leave the tech industry to follow her textile artist dreams. Her work has been exhibited in several galleries and shows in North Carolina including the Museum of Life and Science, the Durham Art Guild and the Greenhill Center for NC Art.

Kelly has never come across a weaving or dyeing technique that she didn't want to try, and loves taking classes that explore all the different ways to play with fiber. 

Finding deep connections in her local weaving and fiber communities is really important to Kelly. She is an active member of her local weaving guild, teaches beginning weaving classes, and is working to grow her regional fibershed group.Item description

Artist’s Statement

“I grew up in South Auckland, New Zealand (NZ). I look back now and realize the special opportunity I had, being rooted in a diverse Pacific Island community, rich in cultures and where you were considered family as soon as you entered your friend’s house.

Moving to the United States (US), prompted a profound exploration of connection, community, and cultural identity. There are a lot of nuances, socially and politically, in this new landscape (of the US) that are not always easy to overcome but quilting is my bridge to connection and community, and now drives my art practice. I relate to this traditional women’s craft, as it is in essence a way to connect community, the maker, and our history. I have been exploring how to continue this through my work, while pushing boundaries of people’s expectation of what a quilt can be. 

My artistic practice revolves around modern quilting where I seamlessly blend traditional techniques with a contemporary twist, embracing both improvisation, minimalism and color. My artistic narrative unfolds through a lens that captures my experiences – a visual dialogue shaped by photography, translating moments into textile works. Each quilt becomes a canvas where emotions and connections intertwine and a story is told.”

Artist Bio

Michelle Wilkie is a textile artist and modern quilt designer whose practice blends traditional quilting techniques with contemporary aesthetics, embracing both improvisation and minimalism.

Over the past two years, Michelle's work has been featured in prominent venues, including the North Carolina Museum of Art, the PNW Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum, the Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte, and CAM Raleigh. She has shown three solo exhibitions at the PAAL Gallery, the Page-Walker Arts and History Center, and the Durham Art Guild. She has participated in notable juried group shows in locations such as ArtFields, Truist Gallery, ArtSpace NC, and international exhibitions in Taiwan, France, Italy, and Czechia.

Michelle has completed artist residencies at the Ox-Bow School of Art, the Durham Art Guild, and the Penland School of Craft. Her work has been featured in multiple publications and included in the book Modern Quilts: Designs of the New Century.