Brigitte Amarger (b. 1954 , France)
Brigitte Amarger is a Paris-based visual and textile artist, post graduated from Applied Arts High schools and Arts University of Paris, France. She creates mural or sculpture achievements, interior and in situ installations that explore themes of nature, light, memory and human beings. Her practice includes textile and numerical techniques, laser cutting and engraving, photography, painting, mold sculpture and works predominantly with the mediums of medical imagery, handmade paper, hot glue, textile, luminescent and reflective materials. She is best known for large-scale X Rays installations and discarded materials artworks.
The diversion of materials, and more particularly of the support of medical imagery for artistic purposes and memory ends, is essential for her. Sensitive to ecological issues, she finds in her artistic practice a double direction, highly symbolic: create artworks by recycling discarded materials until zero waste. Since 1978, Amarger’s work has been exhibited internationally in solo and notable group exhibitions in contemporary art spaces and museums. Her work has been included in private and public collections worldwide, featured in various publications and had numerous distinctions.
Sally Baldwin (b. 1957, Iraq)
Sally Baldwin is a textile artist living and working in Devon, in the SW of the UK. She works both two and three dimensionally using stitch, collage and sculpting techniques, in materials including papers of all kinds, silks and silk fibers. Baldwin is interested in fragility, both of the human condition and of the environment in
the face of climate change and habitat loss.
Bonnie Berkowitz (b. 1956, United States)
Bonnie A Berkowitz, MA, ATR-BC, ATCS, LPAT is an artist, teacher, and licensed Art Therapist who has devoted many years working with troubled adolescents, women with trauma, and teaching art therapy students. Bonnie deeply appreciates what a gift to have had a work life be so closely aligned with art making
and the creative process. From 2003-2010, Bonnie took a detour into puppetry theater where she was able to effectively combine her love of all the arts. Another decade would pass to see her return to fiber art more exclusively. It was clear that between teaching and work life, the lengthy process of making wearable one-of- a-kind garments and objects would take a bit of time and effort to make her way back into the fiber art world.
After multiple decades in community mental health and university life, Bonnie’s time is now shared between working in her private art therapy practice, as a member of Steamroller Collective (working group of dedicated artists), and actively creating art every day. Her life of writing, art making and music is inspired by
reading historical novels, playing music, walking, cooking and feeding family and friends. It is a grateful, vibrant and creative life.
Sunaina Bhalla (b. 1971, India)
Sunaina is a contemporary artist of Indian origin, living in Singapore. Educated in India, she moved to Tokyo in the late 90’s and has spent the last two decades in various parts of North and South Asia. Having completed her formal education as a textile designer specializing in print, she chose to pursue an immersive education in the traditional art form of Nihonga in Japan, where she spent 5 years studying under Suiko Ohta-sensei of the Kyoshin-Do school. She completed her Masters of Fine Arts degree from Goldsmiths University, London and Lasalle College of the Arts, where her thesis topic was “The Gesture and the Ritual of Pain”.
Her work revolves around the repetitive and ritualistic nature of gestures and their traces. She explores the transformative effects of the deliberate infliction of pain on the human body during the curative process of alleviating disease and decay. By using industrial materials analogous to the fragile nature of the body, juxtaposed with fabric and embroidery, she examines the passage of time and the mark-making that documents this process. Sunaina is currently researching traditional healing practices in Singapore and South East Asia and Traditional Medicine that employ natural remedies like herbs in chronic health conditions like Diabetes and Breast Cancer.
Jerry Bleem (b. 1954, United States)
Jerry Bleem, an artist, teacher, writer, Franciscan friar and Catholic priest, earned his M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his M.Div. from the Catholic Theological Union at Chicago. As an artist, Bleem examines the cultural construction of meaning by looking at what we discard and by transforming the non precious through time-intensive accumulation. The resulting work—both 2- and 3-dimensional surfaces—raises issues ranging from apprehension to beauty, ecology to politics. The Illinois Arts Council has recognized his work with grants and individual artist fellowships. Bleem has also participated in numerous
artist residencies including the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. Public collections include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Art and Design, New York; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Bleem has taught in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2000. His interests span historic and ethnographic textiles and traditions, the dynamics of collecting, and material culture expressive of popular religious practices. In his writing, Bleem investigates the intersection of art and religion in a monthly column for U. S. Catholic magazine; his essays have appeared in journals and exhibition catalogs.
Boisali Biswas (b. 1964, India)
Boisali Biswas is a studio artist working in mixed media fibers, born and brought up in India. Her formative years during BFA were spent at Visva-Bharati University, India, founded by Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan. The essence of that profound experience throughout her educational journey has stayed with her, and continues to influence her work. She completed her MFA at Bowling Green State University.
As an immigrant artist, her work is constantly informed by her existence between the two cultures. Even after living in the US for over three decades, most often Boisali finds herself drawn to her roots, and she strives to explore and express the complexity of cultural identity and belonging in her work. She transforms personal narratives and cultural traditions into vibrant assemblages of multicultural artistry.
She has shown extensively in reputed galleries and recently at the World of Threads festival at Toronto. She had a solo show at Buckham Gallery at Flint, MI, early this year and has a lineup of several upcoming invitational shows including one at Muskegon Museum of Art in ’26. She will be a featured artist in the Textile Fibre Forum magazine, published from Australia, in the Dec issue, 2024.
Carolyn Carson (b. 1953, United States)
Carolyn Carson is a fiber artist living in Pittsburgh, PA. She began working with textiles as a child, sewing her own clothes. Later she began to create bed and crib quilts using her own designs, and after a 15-year hiatus during which time she went back to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in History and Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and began an academic career teaching Urban Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, she engaged in her art practice again. Although she began as a quilter, weaving is now her predominant form of artistic expression.
Two themes dominate Carson’s work: women and bodies of water, primarily the oceanic coastlines. It is along the coast where she feels the intense presence of God and an overwhelming sense of peace. And it is women, the life-giving force of society capable of wielding great strength, who have the power to maintain a
healthy and vibrant society and bring some sense of sanity and peace to civilization.
Retired from academia, Carson now prefers to create large-scale installations, the largest of which to date is 60 feet long, but she also weaves numerous small-scale works. Many pieces are woven with weft that she has hand spun. All are driven by internal emotions, often the need for solace.
Trevin Davis (b. 1996, United States)
Trevin Davis is a visual artist and illustrator living in Dallas, Texas currently working as an illustrator / designer focusing on kids’ meal prizes and packaging by day and an aspiring fiber artist by night. Davis loves to experiment and find new ways of approaching ideas and solving problems and after reaching a point where creating art on the computer wasn’t scratching that itch, he started creating 2-dimensional needle felted illustrations which after some trial, led to creating 3-dimensional felt sculptures.
Growing up, Davis was surrounded by Southwestern folklore and historical tales and that has always been a major component of his work no matter the medium and with fiber arts, and needle felting in general his work not only can visually look folksy but also has a greater feeling of whimsy. The idea of materiality
heightening the emotion of the piece really began to open up to him when he visited a Sheila Hicks exhibition for an Art History class in 2015, it was the first time where he wanted to touch a piece of art and thought about what it was made out of and how it was made.
Delaina Doshi
Delaina Doshi, a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, reimagines textiles through a fusion of tesserae, assemblage, and archival techniques, exploring narratives of personal heritage and material culture inspired by her rural Midwestern upbringing and experiences married to a first-generation Indian American. Her rich alternative tapestries have been exhibited nationally and internationally, with her recent work Reconciled winning Best in Show at the 2023 Evanston + Vicinity Biennial. Doshi earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023 and is a recipient of the prestigious Helen Frankenthaler Award.
Risa Hricovsky (b. 1985, United States)
Risa Hricovsky is a sculptural installation artist. Their work pushes the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and between art, design and craft. Risa received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a post-bacc from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BFA from Bowling Green State
University. Risa has been a recipient of a Bailey Opportunity Grant, Current Art Fund Grant and won 1 st place in mixed media at the Zanesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics. Risa has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently they had a solo exhibition Then is Now at the Arkansas Museum of Art. Risa has attended many prestigious residencies; most notable residencies are The Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA, Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skealskor, Denmark and SIM in Reykjavik. Iceland. Currently, Risa is an Assistant Professor of Art at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN.
Cynthia Martinez (b. 1954, United States)
Cynthia Martinez is a contemporary textile artist living in Northeast Ohio. After graduating from college, raising two daughters, and retiring as an art teacher, she began a new career focused on her passion for weaving. It had been a part of the art department curriculum when she was teaching and quickly became one
of her favorite lessons, so she was eager to explore it within her own artistic practices.
Martinez has always used color and shapes to create texture in her weavings, but she wanted to experiment with alternative methods to bring a new dimension of tactile experiences to her work. She began exploring the use of non-traditional techniques by weaving with various types of fibers, tree roots, zip ties, sisal, and jute, as well as creating sculptural components through the use of pvc pipes, repurposed fabrics, wires, and found objects. Her artistic endeavors to push the boundaries of textile art have added new depth and dimension to both her 2D and 3D weavings and sculptures. Martinez’s pieces are being shown in exhibits across the country, in private homes, and in the permanent collections of museums.
Chieko Murasugi (b. 1957, Japan)
Chieko Murasugi, an abstract painter, mixed-media, and textile artist, was born in Tokyo (1957) and immigrated to Canada with her parents and sister in 1961. She has degrees in Psychology (B.A. McGill, Ph.D. York U), specializing in Visual Perception, and in Studio Art (B.F.A. York U, M.F.A. UNCChapel Hill). In 1990,
Chieko traveled to California to pursue a postdoctoral research fellowship in Visual Neuroscience at Stanford University. After completing her research, she began an art practice in San Francisco where she resided for 20 years before relocating to the NC Triangle in 2012. In the past two decades Chieko has exhibited her work nationally in galleries and museums. Her works reside in corporate collections, and in the collections of the City of Raleigh, Durham, and of Duke University. Her art practice is featured in Liza Roberts’ 2022 book, “Art of the State: Celebrating the Visual Art of North Carolina” (UNC Press). Chieko is a co-founder and co-curator of BASEMENT, an artist collective that promotes works by experimental artists with roots in the Southeast.
Galya Rosenfeld (b. 1977, United States)
In her work, Galya Rosenfeld searches for internal logic of form and material alongside self-reflexive commentary about her fields of activity. She accesses a diverse range of materials through her practice, mixing traditional techniques with those she has developed. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Jewish Museum, Berlin. Ruled by mathematical formulas as much as creativity, Rosenfeld’s designs emerge from the place where whimsy meets pragmatic thought. Her work has
been exhibited in venues such as at the Tel Aviv Museum; the Eretz Israel Museum; the Jewelry Museum in Pforzheim (Schmuckmuseum); the Manchester Craft and Design Centre; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; and the Jewish museums in San Francisco and New York. Her work was presented to the German Bundestag by Israel’s late President Shimon Peres, and Rosenfeld was selected to participate in the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies program. She received the 2008 Design Award from Israel’s Ministry of Culture and Sport. Since 2006, she has been a lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, in the Jewelry and Fashion Department.
Caroline Sawyer (b. 1952, United States)
Caroline Hicks Sawyer has spent most of her work life as an electrical engineer. Weaving was her creative outlet which she has done for over 20 years. Her main focus was fiber art, specifically art to wear, and many of her hand dyed, hand-woven scarves, jackets, and coats appeared in curated fashion shows and elite shops from coast to coast. But the thing that intrigued her most was a weaving structure developed by Peter Collingwood called Macrogauze. Finally, designing a new loom, and her Glowforge to build it, have given her the ability to make Macrogauze or as she calls it “Floating Warps;” her new passion. She is now an award- winning artist selected to exhibit at many international art venues. She also credits her return to college, this time with an emphasis on art and sculpture, for her new enthusiasm and deep well of inspiration. Since retiring from AT&T, she works from her new custom designed studio near Philadelphia with the assistance of her husband and their two Saint Bernards. She is a member of Hudson Mohawk and Jockey Hollow Weavers Guilds, and an active member of the Philadelphia Guild of Hand Weavers, Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen, and the Handweavers Guild of America.
Baylee Schmitt (b. 1998, United States)
Baylee Schmitt is currently the printmaking lab manager at University of Cincinnati DAAP. Memory, place, and the indistinguishable difference between childhood fact and fantasy are central to Baylee’s practice as a fiber artist and printmaker. Baylee has exhibited work with solo exhibitions at River East Gallery in Toledo, OH, at LASC in Lexington, KY, the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, OH, and an upcoming exhibition of a new installation at Laisun Keane Gallery in Boston, MA. Baylee has also participated in group exhibitions at DesignTO in Canada, Ohio Craft Museum in Columbus, OH, Sanitary Tortilla Factory in Albuquerque, NM, and Gallery 130 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS.
Phoebe Vlassis (b. 1985, Greece)
Phoebe Vlassis was born and raised in the suburb of Halandri in Athens, Greece to an Australian mother and Greek father. She has been living in New Orleans for the past 11 years and before that she lived in Vancouver, Valencia and toured the Greek coastline and the east coast of Sicily on a circus tall ship. Her journey through places and practices, have woven a tapestry of a multidisciplinary artist that focuses on weaving, music, performance and has fostered a deep curiosity around language, words and communication. Her most recent practice is connecting weaving to music, using the loom as a percussive instrument collaborating with other musicians bringing this typically solitary activity into a communal realm and creating a new amalgam artform. She is a member of the Polyphonic Balkan vocal ensemble Trendafilka, sings and plays the accordion in her traditional Greek music band and leads a community choir that doubles as a Greek language class. Phoebe has been weaving for 8 years gaining her knowledge through the generosity of mentors and peers, has received a BSc in Industrial Design, University of Portsmouth, UK and Diploma in Theatre Production, Langara College (Studio 58), Canada.
Britny Wainwright (b. 1990, United States)
Britny Wainwright is a sculptor who uses ceramics, fiber, and mixed materials to abstract and draw meaning from domestic objects. Deeply invested in feminist material culture she advocates for assertive decorative language in the gallery. Britny has shown work at the Weston Gallery in Cincinnati, OH, Vinegar
Contemporary in Birmingham, AL, VisArts in Rockville, MD, New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT, The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR among others. She has held several residencies, most recently as a co-facilitator for “Clay in the Expanded Field” at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Edgecomb, ME. She is a cofounder of Drea Clinic Project Space in Columbus, OH and currently serves as visiting faculty and Director of Foundations Studies in the Department of Art at Ohio State University.
Jennifer Zee (b. 1968, United States)
Jennifer Zee is a contemporary fiber artist, living and working in Washington DC. When she was a child, sewing was an important part of Jennifer’s play – she repaired her doll’s clothing and performed “operations” to heal her stuffed animals when they were torn. Later, she used her mother’s sewing machine to make gifts for her friends and family. After earning her BFA in wood and furniture design at Buffalo State College, she established herself as an art teacher, first in Western New York, and then in Maryland and Washington DC. Now, she stitches together anatomical and conceptual threads to create art that explores and celebrates the contradictions in life. Maryland Institute College of Art awarded Jennifer a MA in art education in 2016. She has shown her artwork in Buffalo, NY, Philadelphia, PA, and in and around Baltimore, MD.
