A Changing Fabric features new and recent works by four national artists who reclaim traditional craft forms and textiles through a contemporary vision and process. A central theme of the show is the relationship between textiles and conventional painting and sculpture. Exhibition artists Hildur Bjarnadóttir, Jessica Rankin, Nick Cave, and Jil Weinstock question accepted notions of fine versus traditional arts while exploring themes of gender, race, and memory.

Recognized for her contemporary interpretations of craft forms such as embroidery, needlework, and crochet, Hildur Bjarnadóttir questions notions of “high” and “low” art, examining ways in which cultural traditions continue to inform contemporary values and forms of artistic expression. Another artist who reclaims these labor-intensive craft forms is Jessica Rankin. Her large-scale embroidered tapestries, or “brain maps”, weave a rich visual vocabulary of words, images, and symbols into translucent fabric landscapes. Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits” are a form of fabric sculpture, comprised of metal, plastic, hair and found objects designed to rattle with the movement of the wearer. As a black male, Cave’s feelings of racial isolation are thus embodied within the multiple layers and textures of found and fabricated materials. Turning textiles into multicolored sculptures and paintings, Jil Weinstock suspends vintage dresses into circles and ovals of cast rubber that address both formalist themes and those of memory and rites of passage.