Each year, SDA’s International Exhibition In Print showcases the breadth and depth of contemporary artists and designers working with or inspired by fiber art and/or textile-based materials, methods, and techniques. The work of selected artists is featured in the Fall 2020 issue of the Surface Design Journal. To buy a copy of “Devotion: Sewing the Sacred”, go to the SDA Marketplace. A free digital sample is available on our SDA Journal page.

Read more about the issue on our blog, or download the SDA app to read the Fall issue on your mobile device.

Devotion: Sewing the Sacred

As makers, we often ask ourselves “What does devotion look like in a material form?” There are purposeful acts we make by choice and other behaviors that we perform out of ritual and habit. The cycles and loops of daily life can sometimes seem mundane, forgettable, and otherwise ordinary. Perhaps through these repetitive and devotional processes of textile production, we can see something meaningful, surprising, and even sacred emerge in the humble routines of handwork and daily life. The idea that a link exists between the sacred and the mundane is a constant and universal theme within the human story. This Exhibition In Print seeks to reveal these narratives and invited artists using many material traditions to explore the theme as it manifests in their particular and idiosyncratic lives.

Awards

Award honorees are featured with expanded coverage in the October publication of the Surface Design Journal Fall 2020 edition, Devotion: Sewing the Sacred, SDA International Exhibition in Print.

• Guest Juror Award: Antonius-Tín Bui
• Surface Design Award: Phoenix McNamara
• Material Exploration Award: Noah Breuer
• Innovative Installation Award: Caron Tabb
• Modern Meets Traditional Award: Heather Beardsley
• Innovation in Technique Award: Emily Yurkevicz
• Next Generation Award: Connor Dyer

Jurors

Jovencio de la Paz is an artist, weaver, and educator. His work explores the intersection of textile processes such as weaving, dye, and stitch-work as they relate to broader concerns of language, histories of colonization, migrancy, ancient technology, and speculative futures. Interested in the ways transience and ephemerality are embodied in material, de la Paz looks to how knowledge and experiences are transmitted through society in space and time, whether semiotically by language and code or haptically by made things. He is currently Assistant Professor and Curricular Head of Fibers at the University of Oregon.

Lauren Sinner is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, teacher, writer, and performer based in Portland, Oregon. She is currently the Managing Editor of Surface Design Journal, Mentor to MFA candidates, and an independent contractor to many arts organizations throughout the country. She received her MFA in Applied Craft + Design from the joint program between the Oregon College of Art and Craft and the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2016.

Questions?

For questions, contact info@surfacedesign.org.