Discover an enchanted world of fiber artistry in this immersive group exhibition
Untitled by Tranesha Smith-Kilgore, 2022, mixed media sculpture, 41 x 22 x 18 inches
Imagine a faraway place where the air is warm and fuzzy, stalactites of soft and luscious textures hang above, and the walls come alive with billowing tapestries covered in vibrant patterns. Textured landscapes and curious characters made of yarn, thread, felt, fabrics, and notions depict a colorful and imaginative world made entirely of fiber.
In the studios and from home, CE artists interested in needle crafts have expanded their horizons by experimenting with technique, scale, and materials to consider their practice from the perspective of sculpture.
Join the Creativity Explored community for a textural journey into Fabricave, opening to the public at the CE gallery on Friday, September 16.
Curated by CE teaching artists Alexander Hernandez and Victor Molina
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Featured Artists
Laron Bickerstaff, *Ada Chow, Linda Davenport, Katherine Finn-Gamino, Allura Fong, Maribel Guzman, Vincent Jackson, *Tranesha Smith-Kilgore, Andrew Lee, Steven Liu, Miriam Munguia, José Nuñez, *Karla Quiñonez, Ethel Revita, Irene Rivas, Kevin Roach, Vanessa Ruffin
*Debut CE gallery exhibition
The exhibition includes a collaborative SAORI weave made by Jay Herndon, Jesus Huezo, Kevin Cordoba, Hanh Chau, Tonya Lewis, Kaocrew "Yah" Kakabutra, Richard Wright, Makeya Kaiser, Brian Hayes, Yukari Sakura
The gallery will be closed on Thursday, September 29 for a special event.
Watch our exhibition walkthrough with the curators
VIP Donor Preview
Our preview events return at the gallery and studio for Fabricave on Thursday, September 15 from 4:00 to 7:00 PM! Registration will be required for this special event.
Venture into the Fabricave… more about the exhibition
In curating the exhibition, teaching artists Alexander Hernandez and Victor Molina – both experienced fiber-based artists in their own right – partnered directly with the featured artists in the CE studios to create unique quilts, tapestries, and outfits. They encouraged artists who typically work in traditional mediums to experiment with fiber and embroidery while incorporating their favorite subjects and illustrative styles. The result is a vibrant and experimental aesthetic of embroidery and soft sculpture completely unique to Creativity Explored.
Untitled (Collab Tapestry) by Katherine Finn-Gamino, Kevin Roach, Ethel Revita, with teaching artist Pilar Olabarria, 2022, mixed media tapestry, 66 x 57 inches
Programs at Creativity Explored have featured fiber arts and fashion for decades. Since the early 1980s, City College of San Francisco instructor Carole Fitzgerald has led a surface design course in the studio as part of the college’s efforts to connect with and offer free services to the disability community.
During two semesters each year, artists learn about surface design, needlecraft, and fashion – applying their skills to a series of projects. This ongoing partnership with CCSF inspired the 2018 Fabulate fashion show and exhibition at CE, covered by Tony Bravo in the SF Chronicle. Fabricave, continues this tradition with a focus on expanding opportunities to experiment to all studio artists.
In recent years CE artists’ interest in fashion and fiber art has surged, resulting in significant opportunities for the artists to share their fashions and fiber artistry with the world. In 2020, Creativity Explored was funded by a grant from The GUCCI Changemakers Impact Fund to produce four original fashion lines in partnership with Bay Area designers. The garments and creations were recently on view in Mode Brut, a major exhibition at The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco. Garments from Mode Brut were displayed at Art Market San Francisco and accompanied by a panel discussion with featuring local designers and curators speaking about the nexus of fashion, art, and disability.
The art and fashions included in the Fabricave exhibition highlight each artist's individual approach to needlecraft and surface design, while presenting an aesthetic specific to the nearly 40-year-old communal art studio for disabled artists.
Collaboration is at the heart of Fabricave
Untitled (Skirted Vest) by Vincent Jackson and Maribel Guzman with teaching artist Victor Molina, 2022, embroidery thread on mixed fabric vest, 42 x 19.25 inches
The mediums of fiber art and fashion open doors to new ways for Creativity Explored artists to collaborate with one another. As in most traditional studio environments, CE artists are typically focused on developing their individual styles and art practices. But with fiber art, CE artists have the freedom to create individual elements and appliqués, then work together to arrange their work as a cohesive piece.
Teaching artist Pilar Olabarria has long encouraged this type of artistic collaboration between the diverse artists working at CE. When studios were closed during the height of the pandemic, these collaborations became a central mode for artists to connect with their peers. Groups of artists would meet at a park with Pilar, sewing together their individual pieces into colorful wall hangings, much like traditional quilting circles.
A skirted vest by Vincent Jackson and Maribel Guzman translates Jackson’s iconic painterly forms and Guzman’s fastidious embroidery into a couture garment. To create the garment, Jackson arranged boldly patterned and roughly cut fabric appliqués onto the draped form, and secured each with a few simple stitches of yarn. Guzman’s precise and vibrant embroidery, breathes life into the printed floral patterns on the skirt. The form of the garment harkens to 1960s house dresses, but with a folk art edge – reminding the viewer of the domestic acts of patching and mending.
In the spirit of traditional techniques, Fabricave features a 30-foot-long textile, created in 2012 by dozens of CE artists in the studio during a collaboration with SAORI Arts NYC, an organization that provides hand-on looms and training to programs for disabled people. The piece itself is the result of dozens of hours of manual weaving and symbolizes the collective studio environment of Creativity Explored.
Experimental approaches to traditional crafts
Untitled (Quilt) by Ada Chow, 2022, embroidery thread and fabric quilt, 39 x 62 inches
The tradition of quilting is reimagined in a series by Ada Chow for her debut at the CE gallery. Translating her minimalist illustrations of flowers and people into embroidery, artist Ada Chow created a series of hand-constructed quilts using felt and patterned fabrics.
Working from home and at the studio, Chow focused on each square as an individual work of art, ‘drawing’ her forms with different colors of thread. After completing a number of squares, Chow arranged and assembled the final quilts with curator Hernandez in the studio.
Fabricave also introduces the work of Tranesha Smith-Kilgore, who joined the CE studio in 2020 working mostly from home. Now in the studio with more room to create, her amorphous multimedia sculptures have grown in size and begun to incorporate found objects discovered in the studio.
(Detail) Untitled by Tranesha Smith-Kilgore, 2022, mixed media sculpture, 78 x 7.5 x 4.5 inches
The multimedia sculptures by artist Tranesha Smith-Kilgore interpret the practice of macrame with a Duchampian sense of wonder. Looping and tying thread, yarn, twine, rope, and torn pieces of fabric, Smith-Kilgore funnels her energy and compulsions into the acts of wrapping, knotting, and braiding. Each string of fabric, ribbon, and yarn in her sculptures is knotted to chicken wire forms, or onto other components. The artist then braids each piece into a long ‘friendship bracelet’ occasionally entangling objects like buttons, bells, beads, car keys, plastic bread bag fasteners, LEGOS, lanyards, toys, binder clips and office supplies, hair curlers, and whatever else is left nearby in the studio!
Her work is never finished and teaching artists at Creativity Explored work with the artist to find a good stopping point to ensure the sculptures can be moved, stored, and displayed. Fabricave is Smith-Kilgore’s first exhibition at Creativity Explored, and her artworks play a central role in the gallery installation – acting as geological structures protruding from the fiber-filled walls of the Fabricave.
Join the Creativity Explored community to celebrate the needlecraft, fashions, and fiber-based art of developmentally disabled Bay Area artists in Fabricave!
Artworks are available for sale at the gallery or on the CE Artsy page with 50% of sales proceeds benefiting the artists directly.