Fiber artists send messages with their art
7/16/26
Auburn, NY (July 16, 2026) – California artist Susan Doyle has two pieces in the Schweinfurth Art Center’s current exhibition, “T3%+!le$ –The Language of Fiber.” Each one features stitching and painting over pages from two frequently banned books, “1984” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“Inspiration for my artwork comes from current events and my experience of the world around me,” she said in her artist’s statement. “I use a variety of techniques to express my concerns for political, global, feminist, and personal issues. My recent work deals with the proliferation of banned books in schools and libraries across the United States.”
All the artists in the exhibition use words to send a message – personal or political – to viewers. The show was organized by Surface Design Association (SDA), a group that promotes awareness and appreciation of fiber art and supports artists through publications, exhibitions, and events.
Artworks in the exhibit engage broadly with ideas of communication – from poetry and prose to computer code, indexing, and archiving – as it relates to the grammar of textiles and the vocabulary of fiber. The exhibition’s juror, artist Diana Weymar, pored through 500 separate artworks from 307 artists during the judging process. The Schweinfurth show includes 56 works by 40 artists.
The exhibition is being held in conjunction with “Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026,” a nationwide semiquincentennial initiative led by Craft in America. Participating institutions across the United States are presenting exhibitions that address the importance of the handmade and celebrating the diversity of craft that defines America.
“Many of these pieces touched on many different issues: school shootings, migration, ICE, censorship, political and personal slogans, gun violence, love, joy, gender, faith, headlines, family relationships, safety, caregiving, aging and more,” Weymar said in a July 8 Textile Talk. “I think there were a lot of pieces in this exhibit that matter to all of us.”
Kathleen McConaughy, of Rocky River, OH, submitted “Math: school shootings 2000-2023,” a stark red and white graphic quilt that shows each U.S. state and its school shooting statistics. “The biggest challenge with this piece was finding the data to do the piece,” she said. “There is no authorized, central data point in the United States about school shootings. Every source I found was conflicting.”
She settled on using numbers from David Riedman’s K-12 School Shooting Database. “The large numbers represent the number of school shootings in every state from 2000 to 2023,” McConaughy said in the Textile Talk. “And the fractions, the numerator represents deaths and the denominator represents other casualties. I worked on this over 2 years. It was very labor intensive.”
Her quilt won Second Prize in the exhibition.
Some artists tackle personal issues in their work. Artist Jessica Baker, of Woodstock, NY, stitched together playing cards that were torn by her mother, who was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia. Baker strung together 10 decks of cards in a tapestry, “Posthumous Collections 1,” that she hung from the ceiling in the Schweinfurth’s main gallery.
“There was something cathartic about repairing the things that she tore apart, especially because she was this incredible person in her lifetime,” Baker said. “She was creative. She was a scientist. She had so many hobbies, including embroidery, including collecting shells.
“So taking all these things into my studio and then repairing the things that really came apart at the end was a cathartic experience that helped with the grieving process,” she added.
Glens Falls, NY, artist Joy Muller-McCoola’s piece, “Migration Cairns,” received a Surface Design Association Award of Excellence. The artwork consists of several cairns or piles of felted and stuffed “rocks” that convey arrows or messages. “These cairns are meant to appear to offer direction, but there are arrows that go in conflicting directions, showing there’s no way to safety,” she said in the Textile Talk.
“I’ve included text on several of the stones that state the reasons for migration,” Muller-McCoola added. “They are written in the positive: tolerance instead of racism; peace instead of war; potable water, climate, air quality instead of pollution.”
The felted rocks are her way of dealing with the coming climate crisis. “We should have spent the last decade preparing for global migration … (from) where there isn’t enough water, where land is disappearing underwater, where heat is becoming unbearable,” she said. “Instead, we are involved in wars that decimate communities. So my cairns lead nowhere.”
“T3%+!le$ – The Language of Fiber” will be on display at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY, through Aug. 15, 2026. For more information on the exhibition, link to https://www.schweinfurthartcenter.org/t3-le-the-language-of-fiber. Surface Design Association’s Textile Talk can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZfOBZ-kT9Y. Read more about “Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026” at https://www.handwork2026.org/.
If you go …
WHAT: “T3%+!le$ – The Language of Fiber,” an exhibition of 56 fiber art pieces from all over the world
WHERE: Schweinfurth Art Center, 205 Genesee St., Auburn
WHEN: Through Aug. 15, 2026
HOURS: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays, and closed on Sundays.
LINKS:
About “T3%+!le$”: https://www.schweinfurthartcenter.org/t3-le-the-language-of-fiber
Textile Talk video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZfOBZ-kT9Y
About “Handwork 2026”: https://www.handwork2026.org/
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About the Schweinfurth
The Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center is a multi-arts center that opened in 1981 thanks to a bequest from Auburn-born architect Julius Schweinfurth. The art center’s programs include more than a dozen exhibitions each year and educational programs for children and adults, which feature local, national, and international artists. For more information, link to schweinfurthartcenter.org.
Original article here.