East End Arts Council

September 20 - November 1, 2025
ENTANGLED – Open Juried Fiber Arts Exhibition

Winners

Best in show: Michael Sylvan Robinson

1st: Eileen Woods

2nd: Tina Linville

Honorary mention: Valerie Mann

September 20 – November 1, 2025
East End Arts Council’s Eleven West Gallery
11 W. Main St., Riverhead, NY

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 20, 2025 | 4PM-7PM

Jurors: Fiber Artist Sherry Davis and Curator Tom Cugliani

ENTANGLED is the first ever exhibition of contemporary fiber art to be held at East End Arts Council gallery in Riverhead, Long Island.

Works may be free-standing, suspended, or wall-supported for exhibition in our Arts District storefront gallery space, featuring ceilings just shy of 10’. Entangled hopes for a multi-idiom, boundary-pushing fiber art exhibition of abstract, figurative, and conceptual works that cross into a multitude of references. This show will pull visitors into a fierce tangle of connections that unravel the imagination!

About the Jurors: Fiber Artist Sherry Davis and Curator Tom Cugliani

Sherry Davis – Sherry is a mixed media artist based on the North Fork of Long Island with an expansive knowledge of fiber art techniques. Davis’ artwork, which explores themes of transformation, growth, and sustainability, has been exhibited at many galleries and institutions, including the Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, the Schweinfurth Art Center, the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Silvermine Galleries, East End Arts, and the Atlantic Gallery in Chelsea. Her monumental sculpture Harvesting Memories in Blue can be seen on Sound Avenue in Riverhead, NY and has been the focus of much media attention. She has studied with numerous fiber artists including Sheila Hicks, Barbara Eckhardt, Diane Sheehan, Arline Fisch, Nance O’Banion, and Lia Cook.

Tom Cugliani – Tom Cugliani is the curator of two seasonal exhibitions of outdoor sculptures and installations at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island. With a forty-year commitment to contemporary artists in all stages of their careers—from emerging to world-famous—Tom Cugliani has turned his interest to those artists working on the East End of Long Island in the conviction that the creative imagination knows no zip code or blue-chip market. Tom is delighted to be invited with Sherry Davis as a guest curator of Entangled, the first ever exhibition of Fiber Arts to be held at East End Arts. Having worked with artists as diverse as Christian Marcklay and Charles LeDray in the 1990s and Magdalena Abakanovicz while a director at Marlborough Gallery, Tom Cugliani understands the cultural diversity and mutability embedded in fiber art.

Prizes:

  • Best in Show = $500

  • 1st Place = $250

  • 2nd Place = $150

  • Honorable Mentions

About the Artists

1. Madison Noelle Spitzer

Madison Noelle Spitzer is a painter and textile artist based in Southern California. She graduated with her Bachelor’s of Studio Arts from the University of Redlands in 2020 and Master’s of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2023. 

Madison uses textile collage to investigate the world around her and contextualize such pieces of information into a larger, narrative form. Her use in media that is typically regarded as ‘domestic’ also stems from her investigations into the fine lines attempting to separate design, craft, and the Fine Arts, in addition to a strong family history of women who created through textiles but never considered themselves to be artists. 

Through the imagery of the theater, film, and social media, her work is intended to spark conversation and self-awareness particularly regarding the topics of time, relationships, and the narrative quality of life. Madison’s work revolves around an intense desire to understand the role that memories and fantasies play when influencing our day-to-day decisions, how our interaction with technology influences those experiences, and as how such daily decisions impact the course of our futures.

Faye Harnest makes art that cares for people. Her soft sculptures and comics about brain injury, grief, mental health, and motherhood have exhibited in galleries such as Kunstraum, Uncool Artist, Studio Craftspring, and A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn, and at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Artscape Youngplace, and Tangled Art + Disability Gallery in Toronto. Her public artworks have appeared in parks and subway cars. She is also a certified braille transcriber and a disability and mental health advocate. Faye is from Canada and now lives in Brooklyn.

Instagram: @FayeharnestWebsite: https://fayeharnest.com/

Cynthia DiGiacomo is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose work explores the interwoven relationship between memory, myth, and environment—especially as shaped by a life by the sea. Working across mixed media including printmaking, photography, fabric, paint, and encaustic, her process evolves organically through time spent immersed in the landscapes of East End Long Island, Northern California, and the Cycladic Islands of Greece. Influenced by her Greek heritage and the traditions of women loom weavers, DiGiacomo’s work reflects the enduring interconnectedness between the natural world and human experience. Through symbolic and abstract compositions, she invites viewers to reflect on their own story and sense of place.

Instagram: @Cynthia.digi | Wesbsite: https://www.cdesignct.com/cynthia-digi

Carol Paik is an artist based in New York, splitting her time between New York City and Pound Ridge.

Carol grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts. She received a BA in Social Studies from Harvard College, and a JD and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University. 

She is interested in many different media, but most enjoys working with repurposed textiles. After years of buying expensive and often toxic materials for her work, her goal now is to create art exclusively out of the unappreciated, overlooked, landfill-destined stuff she finds around her, of which there is a great abundance.

She tries, in her work, to bring together disparate elements in new ways. She prefers to avoid labels and rigid categories, in her art as well as in her life.

Instagram: @Cpaik670 | Website: https://carolpaik.com/

Valerie Mann (b. 1967, US) is an artist, educator and gallery owner. Her sculptural work explores reclaimed materials use with construction and fiber techniques, while her 2D work is observational painting and abstract mixed-media. She is interested in the intersections of 2D and 3D methods of making as they relate to broader ideas of human connections and resiliency. Her work often carries one idea from a 3D piece to a 2D piece and back again, much like translations between languages.

Mann earned her MFA in Sculpture from Michigan State University and her BFA from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows nationally and internationally. Her work is in public and private collections around the world, including University of Michigan Museum of Art and Google, Ann Arbor.

Instagram: @ValmannartWebsite: http://valerie-mann.squarespace.com/

Andrea Cote is an interdisciplinary artist working in photography, video, printmaking, and performance. Her practice encompasses studio-based work, mixed-media installations, and public projects that involve community participation. 

Based In Hampton Bays, she has exhibited her work in North and South America at venues including Islip Art Museum, Delaware Art Museum, Abrons Arts Center, The Print Center, The Moore Gallery, Guild Hall and PanAmerican Art Projects. Her performances have been featured at The Watermill Center, The Neuberger Museum, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The Peekskill Project, Chashama, The Dumbo Arts Festival, and Photo Buenos Aires.   In 2012 a 13-year survey, “Body of Evidence,” was presented at Dowling College. 

She is the recipient of several grants including NYSCA Creative Individuals Grants in 2014 and 2018 and a SIP Fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. She received a NYSCA Artist Support Grant with the Patchogue Arts Council for a community project for 2023. Residencies include The Church Sag Harbor, the Uncommon Residency at Sound View in Greenport ,NY, and the Miami Paper & Print Museum.

She recently completed two projects for Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY  – one as the featured artist of the 2024 Road Show at Bridge Gardens, followed by a Visiting Artist Initiative culminating in an installation at the museum including over 150 local participants, “The Nature of Humanity.” 

In the summer of 2025, she had outdoor works in “Sculpture at Sylvester Manor,” on Shelter Island, and “Sculpture on the Trail,” at CEED, the Center for Environmental Education and Discovery in Bellport, NY.

Instagram: @Andreacoteart | Website: https://www.andreacote.com/

 

Karla Rydrych – I’m haunted by the notion that every object has a story to tell.

My assemblages and domestic sculptures are fashioned out of objects that speak to me – old suitcases, unfinished hand-stitched pillows, a child’s dress from the turn of the century. I may begin with a personal item that has outlived its use in my life — such as an old nightgown, a sweater of my mother’s wedding dress. I then add scraps of piecework – – domestic crafts that have outlived their usefulness and are filled with unrepairable holes. In this way, the work of n unknown craft person can be preserved into something new and beautiful.

All these objects, fabrics or pieces of clothing have been used or worn by someone, lived in and animated by the previous owner. I manipulate the fabric and add weight and strength to what can often be a fragile material by layering thread, adding lace, embroidering text and staining the fabric. This is my version of storytelling, and an outward expression of an interior dialogue.

The process is slow and meditative – a reaction to the perfection of mass-produced, cheap, disposable goods. The work becomes an exploration of the time and intimacy of handiwork. I spend hours and months bent over a piece. As I stitch, I am further integrated into the work – sweat from my hands, a spot of blood from a pricked finger, a strand of hair that gets tangled into a piece of embroidery floss – are all literally incorporated into the textile.

Each tangled piece of thread is part of the memento mori, celebrating the complexity, messiness and ultimate decay of human life. I seek to explore the space between our individual and collective memories from the perspective of story and experience. I want to challenge our perception of the object, its worth and our memory of it. I’m creating repositories for our joys and sorrows; sculptures which summon ghosts and keep our stories

Instagram: @Karlarydrych | Website: https://www.karlarydrych.com/

Margaret Schultz – An embroidered personal goddess, housed within the quiet sanctum of an antique sewing drawer. Created to honor a specific woman, this goddess is singular and sacred, embodying the spirit, strength, and stories of the individual for whom she was designed. No two goddesses are alike; each is a reflection, a symbol, and a silent celebration.

The choice of materials is intentional. The thread, long associated with women’s hands and histories, becomes a medium not only of craft but of connection—binding the present to the past. It weaves together the unseen labor, the generational wisdom, and the quiet resilience of women whose artistry was often expressed in the everyday: in mending, in making, in care.

The antique sewing drawer, once a vessel for utility, now becomes a reliquary. It frames the goddess as sacred and storied, elevating domestic tradition into spiritual ritual. By placing the goddess within this context, I reclaim and reframe the creative legacy of women—not as background, but as the foundation.

This piece is both a portrait and a prayer. It acknowledges the sacred in the personal, the divine in the handmade, and the enduring power of women’s creativity across generations.

Amy “Yarn Rambo” Stevens is a Kansas City–based artist whose work pushes at the edges of boundaries—between fiber and fine art, self and society, labels and lived experience. Known for her dynamic tufted fiber art, Yarn Rambo has exhibited in esteemed spaces such as the Zhou B Art Center, Bridge Space, and Images Art Gallery, while also bringing her practice to life through festivals, live performances, and community art calls.

Her signature approach transforms the tactile softness of yarn into bold, participatory statements that question identity, resilience, and belonging. The I AM series, for instance, invites viewers to literally reshape words and meaning, reflecting the fluidity of self-definition and the power of play.

Grounded in the trust she built with fiber art, Stevens has continued to evolve her practice, expanding into digital and mixed-media work that carries the same spirit of vibrancy and disruption. Whether tufted, painted, or pixelated, Yarn Rambo’s art resists boxes and labels, unraveling assumptions while weaving connections across mediums and communities.

Instagram: @Amystevensart | Website: https://yarnrambo.art/

An internationally-exhibited genderqueer fiber artist, activist, and leader in arts education, Michael Sylvan Robinson earned an M.F.A in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College (2008) and a B.A. from Bennington College (1989) with an emphasis in dance and drama. With a background in costume design and as a performance artist, their contemporary fiber art has been shown in galleries and museum exhibitions including Rome Art Week, SPRING / BREAK Art Show, the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco, and the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts. Sylvan’s fashion art was photographed for Vogue Germany, commissioned and worn at the Met Gala in 2021 by theater producer and fashion enthusiast, Jordan Roth; their Met Gala collaboration was featured in an interview for Vogue and Vogue France. Sylvan was interviewed on fashion art and activism for Dressed: The History of Fashion Podcast (Episode 239: April, 2022). Identity Is… Jordan Roth’s Met Gala 2021 garment was exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC (April – June, 2024); Roth was photographed wearing all his Met Gala outfits, including Sylvan’s design, by master photographer Paolo Roversi for Shadowplay magazine. (April, 2025)

Instagram: @Michaelsylvanrobinsonart | Website: https://www.michaelsylvanrobinsonart.com/

Eileen Woods has spent decades delving into themes of memory and mortality through her art. Working across various media—fiber, painting, woodburning, collage, and installation—Woods explores the randomness of death and the poignant moment of transition between life and death, reflecting on how we confront that inevitable passage.

Woods holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and has been recognized with a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine. She has taught at several institutions, including The Ohio State University and West Virginia University. Her work is featured in collections at the Massillon Museum and The Ohio State University, among others. Woods’ exhibitions have been showcased at the Massillon Museum, the Fitton Center for Creative Arts, and the Mansfield Art Center, and the Canton Museum of Art.  Her achievements include receiving the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for FY 2021.

Woods resides in Westlake, Ohio, with her husband Rich, their dog Celeste, and four finches.

Instagram: @Eileenwoods78

Julia Angier – Many of my happiest childhood memories took place by the sea with my two sisters and my father. Following his passing from cancer, I began to explore memory, joy, and grief with my artwork. I transform a combination of needle felted wool, and ceramic sculpture or colored pencil drawings into expressions of the softness and ephemerality of remembrance. Rather than transcribing my memories exactly through these mediums, I use surreal elements, contrasts in scale, and illustrative visualizations of the more fleeting aspects of them to respond to the impressions they leave on me. Pastel colors and low contrast create a dreamlike atmosphere, further signifying the intangible quality of what I aim to capture.I revisit many oceanic motifs in my work, but most important is the form of the seashell paired with the human figure. A seashell is a many layered vessel, with a delicate coil of ever larger, interconnected chambers. Much like a human spirit holds memories, building one on top of the other, starting from the very smallest beginnings, the shell is built, cell by cell, in the same way. This process is reflected in the mediums I work in; all starting with an indefinite core or foundation, that grows shape and clarity as material or color is built up. Through these forms and processes, my work invites the viewer to consider the many layers of the people who inhabit the world around us and the experiences that have formed them.

Instagram: @Juliangier | Website: https://www.juliaangier.com/

Ashley Catharine Smith is a Philadelphia-based artist working in photography, video, and fibers. Through the combination of these mediums, she creates visceral representations of the complexity of intimacy in its many forms— sexual, platonic, and familial. Her work is driven by her desire to understand how feeling rules and gender roles affect our interpersonal relationships and sense of self. It also aims to construct moments of closeness with the subjects of her photographs through their printed image.

Smith earned her MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States at Philadelphia’s City Hall (2024), the National Liberty Museum (2020), Delaware Art Museum (2018), Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (2017), and the Barrett Art Center (2021) among others. From 2021 through 2022 her work was part of the group exhibition, Textile Art of Today, which traveled to museums in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. She has taught photography at Drexel University since 2015 and is currently Photography Department Head at Moore College of Art & Design. A selection of her works can be purchased through Paradigm Gallery + Studio.

Instagram: @Ashleycatharinesmith | Website: https://ashleycatharinesmith.com/

Bonnie J. Smith – This textile is part of a much larger installation titled “Thoughts of The Mind”, “Interpretations In Indigo”. This artwork shows the mind’s thoughts in transition from tangled to understanding our thoughts.

Instagram: @Bonniesmith5800

 

Mary Beth Giraci – My work deals with process while incorporating color, texture, and form. These knitted figures are female archetypes that project a sense of self and reflect how women are seen. By our clothing, body shapes, hairstyles and size- we reflect our cultural histories, place in the world, and status.

The figures are hand knitted and vary in size as I make up the patterns in real time. Mistakes are made often and in evidence, just as drips are left when creating a painting. The original pieces are pinned directly to the wall and can drape on the floor, which creates a play with shadows, and they have a dialogue with each other when hung together.

These pieces are all in shades of pinks which represent “the feminine” However. The are made in bolder, warmer pinks or straited purple tones since these girls will never allow themselves to be invisible in a room. Each figure has a defining gesture or pose that is meant to take up space and to be viewed without apology.

I am purposely working in a formal art language while creating with a craft medium. This duality is explored through the ritual of knitting as I show evidence of the artist’s hand in my work. These pieces are meant to have a strong presence but are actually soft and can be rolled up in a ball, almost like a form of self protection.

Instagram: @Mbgiraci

Emily Martin is a textile artist, weaver, painter, and educator working on Long Island, NY. She is currently the Arts & Education Consultant at The Heckscher Museum of Art (Huntington, NY). Emily started her artistic journey as a student at Huntington Fine Arts and went on to receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fiber with a concentration in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Emily was an instructor and college portfolio advisor at Huntington Fine Arts (Greenlawn, NY) teaching drawing, painting and sculpture. Emily has taught floor loom weaving and block printing at the Textile Arts Center (Brooklyn, NY) and the Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Norwalk, CT). Drawing inspiration from textures found in the world around her, Emily strives to create abstract, multimedia work that incorporates mundane, natural textures with her faith. Emily is passionate about inspiring artists in all walks of life on their artistic journeys. When Emily is not in her studio, she can be found hiking with her husband or reading a mystery novel.

Instagram: @Martie_art | Website: https://www.emilymartinart.com/

Stella Hendricks is a multimedia artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her primary mediums include sculpture and photography and she graduated from Towson University in 2020 with a B.S. in Art+Design. Her work is inspired by liminal spaces of perception and nature. She enjoys art for its healing properties including its ability to question norms, connect with deeper parts of the psyche, and inspire a sense of freedom. 

Stella has participated as a research assistant on curatorial projects including those at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. and the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she was a Souls Grown Deep Intern. She aims to help develop community art spaces for women and non-binary people of color that center around healing and self-expression

Website: https://www.stellahendricks.com/

Dayna Talbot is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been nationally and internationally exhibited and is held in public and private collections. Working with fiber, paint, and sculptural installation, her recent work explores contemporary social and environmental concerns through material and process.

Born outside of Pittsburgh, PA, she received a BFA with distinction from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and her MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design. Dayna lives and works in New Hampshire.

I consider myself an experimental artist working across various the mediums. For me, making is a deeply personal and selfish act—one that is both liberating and frustrating and meditative. Creating has evolved into an obsession with materials and process. I exist in a constant flux of repairing and rebuilding.

My practice is grounded in material exploration, creating two and three dimensional forms, immersive installations, sculptures, paintings, and prints. Each medium explores the tension between the dualities of order and chaos, confinement and freedom, structure and fragility. Through techniques such as wrapping, tying, stitching, and manipulating fiber I create forms that evoke both familiarity and ambiguity.

My earliest inspiration came from watching my Italian grandmother sew and create delicate fiber work. I work with materials such as fabric, thread, wool, and handmade paper, once considered mundane to create works that blur the line between craft and fine art. Working with fiber, which naturally wears, tears, and changes over time, I explore the beauty found in imperfection and impermanence. Ritual and repetition are central to my process, reflecting on society, vulnerability, growth and decay.

Instagram: @Dtalbotart | Website: https://www.daynatalbot.com/

Tina Linville grew up in the Pacific Northwest and received her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington and her MFA in Fibers from California State University, Long Beach. Her sculptures, installations, and collaborative projects have been featured in exhibitions by Textile Arts LA, Handweavers Guild of America, the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation and Craft in America, Jason Vass Gallery and the San Diego Art Institute. In addition to her studio-based work, Linville also considers her work in the community part of her multifaceted art practice. She founded and directed a mentorship program providing artistic development for creatives in her community in 2020 and curated more than 25 exhibitions as part of various artist-run gallery projects based out of her Northern California studio.

She moved from California to Waco, Texas in the summer of 2022 to join the faculty at the Baylor Art and Art History Department where she currently lives and works.

Instagram: @Tinalinville | Website: https://tinalinvillestudio.com/home.html

Claire B Jones creates colorful, whimsical, free-standing sculptures by painting with thread on cotton canvas. The fabric evolves by layering and blending a myriad of machine stitched thread until the underlying canvas is completely covered.

Claire grew up in Scotland, playing in the streets under the watchful eye of the dormant textile mills which dominate the Paisley landscape to this day. Although later in life she would study Art and Design along with Experimental Stitch at the Gail Harker Creative Studies Center, she initially studies Software Engineering in Edinburgh. This propelled her into a world of technology, pulling her from one technological hub to the next, through to her current home in Seattle.
It is from the convergence of these worlds that her art emerges. Engineering and the time-honored traditions of stitch collide as she transgresses the boundaries of what can be created with a sewing machine. Claire hopes her sculptures – and the innovative processes out of which they emerge – generate a sense of possibility, a belief in our capacity to conceive and realize new forms.

Instagram: @Iamclairebjones | Website: https://clairebjones.com/

Felicitas Sloves is a Dutch born weaver and award-winning artist who has been weaving since 1980.  Her work has been exhibited in shows and galleries throughout the East Coast and the South.  Her handwoven fashion accessories have been featured in national publications including Handwoven and The Crafts Report, 500 Judaica, and on local television.  Felicitas is the 2006 recipient of the Handweavers Guild of America/Interweave Press Teach-It-Forward Grant awarded annually to an individual with an innovative weaving program.  Felicitas has received additional awards and recognition for her handweaving and most notably has been recognized for liturgical pieces for both Christian and Jewish worship.  She teaches weaving through Creative Aging Mid-South, a non-profit Memphis based agency offering art workshops and entertainment to the elderly. Her weaving classes are also offered through   The Center for Excellence at the Hutchison School in Memphis and at the Arkansas Craft School in Mountain View, AR. Felicitas also shows and sells her work at regional art venues, most notably WinterArts and Art2Wear.

Instagram: @Memphisweaver | Website: https://www.memphisweaver.com/

Holly Layman – I graduated from Beaver College (now Acadia University) and aspired to be a children’s book illustrator and scientific illustrator, but found barriers and rejection at many points. Frustrated I moved into graphic and web design which paid the bills for a long time, however the satisfaction of producing tangible art eluded me. I owe my talents to my Mother, Lois Clarkson who has been an artist all of her life and most well known for her Belsnickles and Santa figurines at Snowdin Studios. My Father is a historic restoration/preservation specialist and relishes in the details of his trade. Between the artistic flair and knowledge of building my love of sculpture began. My real breakthrough came after meeting my husband who owns a storefront in a busy town and I started creating his window displays and receiving many comments and followers along the way. I had used cardboard as a supporting element in so many of the windows and decided to make the cardboard motorcycle for his display. Since it’s debut many local artists urged me to continue this journey in the the Contemporary Fine Art realm. Since then I have won awards and created some wonderful experiences that will last a lifetime.

I have a few signature techniques including never painting the cardboard. It is all colored cardboard or monochromatic cardboard. Another facet of my work is using one element in each piece that is not cardboard. Sometimes it is more hidden than others. Sometimes it is a neccessary element for support and other times it is an embellishment. My one hope is that people find joy in seeing what can be done using recycled cardboard and to bring attention to the necessity of recycling in order to keep our world healthy and beautiful.

Instagram: @Hlartisan | Website: https://hollylayman.com/

Martine AbitbolA subject I have always been interested in are those simple Prehistoric Drawings. Feelings of unanswered questions. Telling the Movie of Life – then animals, humans, and their encounter.

I collected beach clay for a while, but it is the first time I’ve use them in my drawings to try to have the same effect found in the Grotto. Beautiful vintage Painter’s floor protection drop-cloth linen as mean and support.

This took me in a new adventure with new life becoming my new friends,

conversing with me. 

Thankful for you to be here.

Instagram: @Martine.abitbol.1

Faith Hagenhofer – I was born & raised on Staten Island, NY. Being from an island, with its water surrounded finiteness, has often  been an underlying influence in my work with textiles & fibers. The distance from the urban community of my making, to live rurally as an adult, 3000 miles from my birthplace also figures in my work. I raise sheep as my own art supply, for work in both 2 & 3D, with plant dyed cloth & surface embellishment for color. I use traditional textile skills often with discarded objects, to investigate margins, what connotes inside, outside, the edges of belonging/not belonging. My work visually explores issues of human displacement, often in connection with a changing natural world. Whether focused on refugees, immigration, tourism, settler colonialism, nostalgia or urban/rural divides, I’m drawn to the forces, phases, longings & journeys people engage in. These historical & contemporary themes are always contextual. They reach every “where”, & touch both leavers & stayers.

Instagram: @Faithhagenhofer

Wen Redmond – New England’s internationally recognized artist, Wen Redmond’s fascination with photography finds expression through printing original manipulated photographs directly onto created mixed media substrates, and specially treated natural fibers to craft unique photographic textural constructions. 

Imaginative presentations add to the pioneering innovations and giving her work edge. Every work generates an artistic tension, followed by the excitement of the actual creation of the work. A dialogue is started, and the work becomes real. She calls this work, Digital Mixed Media.

Redmond’s work has been exhibited in major internationally recognized exhibitions, including Quilt National, Visions Museum CA, SAQA’s International Exhibit’s, Fiberart International, Fantastic Fibers, Quilts=Art=Quilts, Intersect Chicago, Excellence In Fibers, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Art Quilt Elements, New Legacies, World of Threads, CA among other juried, invitational and solo exhibitions. 

Her work has won awards at New Legacies CO, Fiber Arts IX, Sebastopol, CA, Maryland Federation of Art, Maria V. Howard Arts Center, Rocky Mount, NC , Fantastic Fibers and Visions Art Museum’s Quilt Japan Award among others. She has appeared on Quilting Arts TV, produced Interweave DVD Workshops and made an appearance on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims in 2025.

Her work has traveled the US, UK, Europe, Japan, and Australia, and is part of the permanent collections of Marbaum at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, CA, Maria V. Howard Arts Center, Rocky Mount, NC, New England Quilt Museum, and private collections. 

She has been featured in numerous magazines and books including her own published books, Digital Fiber Art and Mixed Media Masterpiece and Explorations with Collage- Merging Photographs, Paper and Fiber with Schiffer Publishing.

She currently splits her time between North Carolina and New Hampshire.

Instagram: @Wenredmond | Website: https://www.wenredmond.com/

Jay Sylvester – My work is an attempt to take a feeling of relentless anxiety—over our disconnection with nature (and each other), our hubris concerning our lack of action on climate change and our unrelenting materialism—and translate that into something which, in its physicality, is thought- provoking and emotionally resonant.

My process embodies these kinds of tensions as well. I gather overgrown vines from the forests and fields of Long Island. Once in the studio, I, at times, feel like I’m engaged in a wrestling match with a multi-limbed opponent, often having to literally screw the material to the studio floor to hold it in place – all the while aware of the inherent qualities of the material, trying to merge with it, find a flow to our “dance”, yet allowing its innate qualities to prevail.

And yes, the irony of trying to tame and subdue nature and the pointlessness of those actions is never lost on me.

Instagram: @Jaysylvesterart | Website: https://www.jaysylvesterart.com/

Leo Pontius – Interdisciplinary sculptor with a reverence for textile, Leo works across materials to explore themes of queerness, spirituality, ancestry, and healing from the embodied legacy of colonization.

Instagram: @Leopontiusart | Website: https://www.leopontiusart.com/