tagged

This is a shot of the gorgeous tag that Kathryn Pannepacker gave us at at the Textile Arts Center opening. She came out to check out the opening and I was lucky enough to meet her and she left this lovely note for us. Awesome.


If you do not know Kathryn's work it is very cool and recently had a very nice feature in American Craft Magazine- check it out here.


Her most recent body of work weaves together fibers, unexpected materials, politics, and the notions of war together. It is well explained in the snippet from an article below:

Most recently, Pannepacker's kept busy making tapestries for a show at the Seeber Gallery, where she shares space with her pal Corey Armpriester, for an exhibition titled Allegiance: War or Peace. Pannepacker presents a series titled Pretty Little Bombs. "The idea is there are all these little fires going on in the world today," she explains.

If the humor is subdued for this one, the element of surprise remains strong, especially when making close inspection of these pieces — many of which incorporate national flag designs — which amply display Pannepacker's penchant for utilizing man-made materials along with staples of weaving, such as wool, cotton, jute and silk. The yellow parts of her flag of Rwanda are made from caution tape. A flag of Sierra Leone sports a diamond shape in the center made of silver pipe cleaners and red-tipped matches: It's her take on the notion of blood diamonds. A piece that shows the Israeli and Palestinian flags divided by a wide band of hundreds of matches, in the middle of which sits a small opening, offers quiet commentary on that particular world conflict.

She has been known to set weavings on fire — the match part, that is. The rest of the piece, which she treats with flame retardant, remains intact. Even without the pyrotechnics, these works burn with a strong message.

"When I weave thousands of matches into something but they're not set on fire, it's got all this potential energy," she says. "It's about the capacity for something to happen."

read full article here.

She also does some graffiti weaving where she leaves little weaving's out in the world as she lives and travels through life. Sharing her love towards the process with the community at large.

Recently she did a large scale public work of painting traditional textile patterns on a large wall.

No matter what Kathryn seems to be doing she does it with a sense of humor and obligation towards her craft and the world. She has a strong foundation in tradition but is always pushing the envelope and looking outside of her own self. Admirable work.

See more links to a number of interesting articles here and her blog where she documents her activities as a renegade craft artist.