Opening Reception May 20th, 6-9PM RSVP
Textile Arts Center Project Space
505 Carroll St, Brooklyn, NY 11215

TAC Project Space Open Hours
Saturday – Thursday (through June 3rd)
11am-9pm

Over the last decade, the 50+ artists have shared their resources at the Textile Arts Center (TAC), as working artists, educators or administrators. Thanks to their talents and expertise TAC has become a place to gather and hold space; to learn and to teach; and to make and experience textile art that is meaningful, thought-provoking, and culturally relevant. Each of the artists featured explores textiles in an unique way in their work, reimagining traditional techniques and contributing with new perspectives to the conversation about textile arts.

Limor Alter / Nicole Asselin / Kyra Berman-Gestring / Tegan Brozyna / Jamie Boyle / Ying Cai / Atsuko Chirikjian / Romina Chuls / PJ Cobbs / Annie Coggan-Crawford / Anny Crane / Sam Crow / Melissa Dadourian / Mia Daniels / Dance Doyle / Sara Duell / Rachel Ehlin-Smith / Julia Elsas / Zaida Adriana Goveo Balmaseda / Heidi Hankaniemi / James Hsieh / Lynn Hunter / Julia John / Claire Le Pape / Elena Kanagy-Loux / Tiantian Lou / Chi Nguyen / Kristina Nobleman / Jill Magi / Jennie Maydew / Stephanie Mcgovern / Elissa Medina / Natalie Moore / Kate Phillips / José Picayo / Howard Ptaszek / Alayna Rasile / Emma Redmond / Isa Rodrigues / Etta Sandry  / Hannah Schultz / Kira Silver / Florence Spurling / Natalie Stopka / Elizabeth Tolson / Kelly Valletta / Brigitta Varadi / Miriam Vergara / Hanna Washburn / Emma Welty / Shihui Zhou / Olivia Zisman

Ten years into our journey, TAC’s commitment to unite and empower the textile community remains unwavering.

Calling ALL resident alumni, past staff, teachers, interns, students, mentors, critics, curators, academics, patrons, benefactors, past exhibitors, presenters, lecturers, collaborators, and friends: Please accept our gratitude and praise, and join us in person or in spirit for a #TAC10reunion community exhibition opening May 20th!

Currents (detail)
Lea Thomas
Hemp, indigo
Installation
Courtesy of the gallery

Lea Thomas: Currents
April 12 – May 8, 2019

Trestle Gallery

“A drop of dark blue appears, its stain spreading over the surface. Tendrils stretch across, their circuits entwining and dispersing, carving lucid pathways in their wake. The deepest blue requires more than just one application, it is a multitude of layers blended into one another, with slightly different circumstances and results each time, as sapphire streams ebb and flow concurrently. The azure currents of time, energy, and memory upwell and merge in union.”

Trestle Gallery, together with Doppelgänger Projects, presents Lea Thomas: Currents, where the viewers will walk among cerulean channels of nature and human identity, providing a space of reflection amongst the billows of blue.

Je bâtis a roches mon langage
Firelei Báez
Perforated tarp, printed mesh, artificial and real plants, two paintings
Installation
Courtesy of the gallery

Je bâtis a roches mon langage
April 20 – June 16, 2019

James Cohan

This solo exhibition is Dominican-born, New York-based artist Firelei Báez’s debut with James Cohan Gallery. For this immersive installation, Báez has created a cocooned space with a hand-perforated blue tarp, while overhead is a geo-specific map of the stars as they appeared in the night sky at the onset of the Haitian Revolution. Inside are two imaginative portraits of empowered, black female protagonists, where the viewer is confronted by their mutual gaze. With Je bâtis a roches mon langage, Báez creates sites of connectivity, where overlapping histories and modes of understanding can coexist through reexamination and excavation. Through the run of the exhibition, she will organize readings and programs within the space, inviting the viewer to enrich and activate the installation with their own narratives and experiences.

Loom
Chang Yuchen and Brain Rush
Mixed media
Installation
Courtesy of the artist

Chang Yuchen, Brian Rush: Loom
March 16 –  June 23, 2019

Lyeberry HQ

“Originally people did not wear clothes, for they did not know how to weave. The first weaver was a girl named Hambrumai, who was taught the art by the god Matai. She sat by the river and watched the waves and ripples on its surface and imitated them in her designs. She lay in the forest looking up at the patterns woven by the branches of trees, the leaves of bamboo; she saw ferns and plants and flowers, and from these things learned other designs.” – Legend of Kaman Mishmis

In Loom, Lyeberry HQ presents a site-specific installation by Chang Yuchen (AIR 9), who perceives embroidery as drawing, weaving as writing, and clothes as portable theater, and Brian Rush, who uses reclaimed materials, traditional printmaking, and cast objects. Loom is a conversation between solid and versatile materials, between shape and space.

Guarded Secrets
Erma Martin Yost
Hand-felted, resist-dyed construction
16 “x 16” x 2.5”
Courtesy of the gallery

Erma Martin Yost: Seasons
May 14 – July 1, 2019

Noho M55 Gallery

In Seasons, a solo show of Erma Martin Yost’s felt constructions, she pulls from the legacy of domestic arts and crafts to express a response to the cycles in nature. Assembling bits and pieces of felt, vintage tatting, and embroidery within these expressions, she incorporates them with fabric-printing and dyeing experiments made over the past several decades. This reaches back into her earlier practices to create new works speak of the cycles she aims to evoke, of the season, plants, sun, moon, and life. These pieces are her own personal worlds that express her sense of place, solitude, and contemplation.

Mala
Suchitra Mattai
Fibers and video
60” x 96” x 8″
Courtesy of the artist

Women’s Work: Art & Activism in the 21st Century
Curated by Grace Aneiza Ali
April 10 – August 2, 2019

Pen and Brush

Women’s Work presents the work of five global artists-activists: Sama Alshaibi, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Miora Rajaonary, Suchitra Mattai, and Ming Smith. Taking Oxford Dictionary’s definition of women’s work, “traditionally and historically undertaken by women, especially tasks of a domestic nature such as cooking, needlework, and child-rearing,” as anti-departure, the exhibition challenges the outdatedness of this belief through these five artists’ works. Grounded in the belief that all women’s work is valuable, the exhibition aims to expand beyond Oxford Dictionary’s definition and expose the complex, nuanced, and ever-evolving nature of “women’s work.”

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Complement this month’s shows with these reads!