At first blush, Thomas Roach, appears to be a man of contradictions. He was raised on the plains and lives by the sea; he studied the solid earth and is devoted to the divine; he loves theatre and works in textiles; and is a solitary person committed to community. These contradictions make him an interesting …

Farnaz Jahani (originally from Tehran, Iran) recently received her MFA in Illustration and Fibers from Savannah College of Art and Design, and just became a member of SDA! Jahani joined SDA to continue to be active and stay updated on various methods and techniques designers utilize to treat a surface in a special way. This …

This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup looks at various ways institutions, museums, and galleries are exhibiting and talking about fibers & textiles’ inherent craft. 1) The exhibition Sheila Pepe: Hot Mess Formalism recently opened at the Phoenix Art Museum (Arizona) and features more than 70 works, including the premiere of a three-story, site-specific work created exclusively …

This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup spotlights many different ways artists are integrating nature into the their practice and the natural geometry that nature possesses. 1) These dizzyingly complex installations of unbraided ropes branching out like tree roots are created by Janaina Mello Landini as part of her Ciclotrama series (via Colossal). 2) “Spider Drinks Graphene, …

This month’s Forty Year Flashback comes to us from the Winter 1992 edition of Surface Design Journal entitled, “The Computer Age” with the article “Dangerous Love: The Machine, Society, and Art” by Wayne Draznin. It is interesting to see how technology (and our relationship to it) has changed so much over the past couple decades, …

This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup is for all our weavers out there–with articles ranging from traditional to contemporary practices, processes, and political statements. 1) “The History of Ikat” by Anna Hoffman expores the trendiness and history of ikat and its origins from Southeast Asia, to South America, to the Middle East and beyond (via Apartment …

Veiled Meanings: Fashioning Jewish Dress at the Jewish Museum (NYC) is the first ever comprehensive US exhibition of Jewish dress, drawn from The Israel Museum’s (Derech Ruppin, Jerusalem, Israel) renowned collection. The exhibition opens Friday, November 3rd and features over 100 articles of clothing ranging from the 18th to 20th centuries. Displayed either as complete …

This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup features a mix of artists, exhibitions, and projects that deal with patterns and geometry in either natural or high-tech ways. 1) MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group has created a system to fold materials into various origami shapes when inflated, turning specifically designed paper, plastic, and fabric into representations of …

This fall, James Cohan gallery in New York featured an exhibition of Northern California fiber artists under the enigmatic title, A Line Can Go Anywhere. The group show is curated by Jenelle Porter, who organized the 2015 survey, Fiber: Sculpture 1960-present, which traced, in Anni Albers’ phrase, “the language of thread” through the efflorescence in …

All the articles, exhibitions, and projects for this week’s Friday Fibers Roundup highlight the diversity and wonderment of the simple technique of embroidery. 1) The interview Irem Yazici: Embroidery in Miniature, reveals how Irem transfers images from her imagination into her delightful miniature hoop landscapes and explains exactly why embroidery is so precious to her …