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The fiber and textile art world, with historical roots in quilting bees and weaving guilds, is known for community, sharing ideas and supporting each other through challenges. Right now, these characteristics are especially important–our country’s Constitution is threatened, and civil discourse is acrimonious.
Gather’s Symposium Common Cause in Fiber Art: Connection and Care offers an opportunity to connect with friends, form new relationships with colleagues, and be inspired by artists using their visual voices to express concerns about racism, gun violence, and patriarchal systems of value.
The Gather Artist Advisory invites you to join us as we hear artists share how their experiences inform their art practice and tell stories of healing. Engagement sessions will provide opportunities to connect with each other; caring for each other in community provides an antidote to isolation.
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Artwork by Samantha Fields
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Kick-off Event...Common Cause in Fiber Art: Connection and Care
Engage in a day of thoughtful community connection. Join us for two lively panel discussions about how fiber art addresses systemic discrimination, resists oligarchy and supports a practice of self care.
9:00 am - The day begins with a Makers' Breakfast. Gather on the second floor to make, share, and nosh.
10:15- 11:00 Panel 1: Stories of African American Persistence and Healing. New England artists Susi Ryan and Christie Rawlins-Jackson investigate and document the enduring impact of colonialism and combine their research with personal experiences to tell eye opening, vibrant, compelling tales of mending and healing.
1:15-2:30 Panel 2: The Gathering Storm: Haptic Forms of Resistance. Panelists Samantha Fields, Patricia Miranda and Michael Sylvan Robinson will discuss their practices and the role of the haptic in maintaining mental and physical health in fragmented times. How do we as artists and enthusiasts take care of ourselves in times of crisis?
Plus facilitated engagement groups after each panel among colleagues and friends.
Space is Limited. Sign up today!
Saturday, April 5, 2025
9:00 AM 4:00 PM
Arts Collaborative Medford
162 Mystic Ave
Medford, MA (map)
Schedule of Events
Parking & Directions to Arts Collaborative Medford
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Susi Ryan
Susi Ryan is a Fiber Artist, Performance Artist, Author and Speaker. Born in Connecticut, she is the first American born citizen in her maternal family from Germany and the descendant of Enslaved Africans in her paternal family. Since 1997 Susi has created and exhibited her symbolic story quilts nationally and internationally with a focus on acknowledging, preserving, reclaiming and documenting the culturally diverse history of her Enslaved ancestors, Indigenous People, Family members and other persons unforgotten throughout the African diaspora. Susi is a peaceful advocate for social justice and equality. Susi studied at Clark University, UMASS Dartmouth and is a graduate of the Clemente Courses for the Humanities at the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester. MA
Christle Rawlins-Jackson
jacradesign.com
Christie Rawlins-Jackson is a visual artist and a communications expert who is inspired by her relationships with people, nature and her experiences living and working in West Africa. Rawlins-Jackson, a native of Boston, Massachusetts has exhibited her work throughout the United States. She is the author of “Well Seasoned Sisters”, a cookbook that chronicles an African American quilting guild through the art of quilting and food. She is currently practicing her art; working as a freelance designer; and is proprietor of Jácra Design. Her positions include Director of Communications at African University College of Communications in Adabraka, Accra, Ghana; Art Director/Associate Director of Communications at The Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts; Promotions Designer, Manager and Design Director of the Creative Service Department.
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Patricia Miranda
patriciamiranda.com
Patricia Miranda is an artist, curator, educator, and founder of the artist-run orgs The Crit Lab and MAPSpace, where she developed residencies in Port Chester, Peekskill, and Italy. In 2021 she founded the Lace Archive, an historical community archive of thousands of donated lace works and family histories. She has received grants from the Barbara Deming Fund for feminist work (2024); Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation (2022);Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (2021); two artist grants from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts (2021/2014); an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Relief Grant (2021), and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth (2004-5). She has been awarded residencies at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, I-Park Foundation, Weir Farm Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio, and been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah. Miranda has developed education programs for K-12, museums, and institutions, including Franklin Furnace, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution. She is a noted expert on the history and use of natural dyes and pigments, and teaches about environmentally sustainable art practices. As faculty at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (2005-19) she led the first study abroad program in Prato, Italy (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include: the Olin Fine Art Center (Washington PA), 3S Artspace (Portsmouth, NH), Jane Street Art Center, Garrison Art Center (Hudson Valley, NY), ODETTA Gallery, and Maine Window DUMBO (NYC) and multiple group exhibitions of note. Her recent work has been featured in Art New England (2022), Hudson Valley One (2022) and Brooklyn Rail, (2021). She has an upcoming solo exhibition at Five Points Art Center, Torrington CT (2025).
Michael Sylvan Robinson
michaelsylvanrobinsonart.com
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). Michael Sylvan Robinson’s sculptural and wearable art will be exhibited at the Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles in March, 2023.
Samantha Fields
samanthafields.com
Samantha is drawn to the materials and processes that have historically lived outside of an "Art" context, she strives to make work that can live in and speak to the different worlds of 'high' and 'low.' "I make–slowly–with/through craft. Making slowly is a personal act of resistance against the fast paced, multi-tasking, product-driven world in which I find myself." As a multimedia artist, Samantha engages with these processes as a survival mechanism, aesthetic, and a conceptual strategy. Through these modes of making, she is able to explore different social constructs associated with the decorative: gender, class, professional/hobbyist, and the hierarchical categories of tase and morality. Sam received her MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and her undergraduate degree from Massachusetts College of Art; and is currently a part time lecturer at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at Tufts University.
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Merill Comeau
merillcomeau.com
Merill Comeau is an artist and community organizer. She combines autobiographical exploration with a keen sense of society’s challenges. Comeau employs contemporary interpretations of traditional paper and textile craft processes to create richly detailed, large scale wall works laden with meaning. Comeau’s work has been featured in over 90 exhibitions at venues including the Fuller Craft Museum, Danforth Art Museum, Attleboro Art Museum, Museums of Old York, Maine, the Center for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, PA, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute of Boston and the Fitchburg Art Museum where she received the staff prize in 2019 and juror’s 2nd prize in 2022. The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston’s Art Lab hosted her interactive project Threads of Connection in 2020. Numerous publications have showcased her work including Surface Design Journal, Surface Design Association Blog, TextileArtist.org, Fiber Art Now, MutualArt.com, The Boston Globe, FiberArts, and World of Threads Artist Interviews. An active member of multiple artist groups, Comeau is the founder/director of Gather Symposium 2025 and serves on the Events Committee of the Surface Design Association and the Board of Directors of Snow Farm.
Deborah Santoro
deborahsantoro.com
Deborah Santoro engages visual and material strategies to unravel oppressive methodologies. The interstitial spaces between textile, paper, drawing, printmaking, and lens based ways of looking forge pathways into neural networks, creating narratives that allow for multispecies flourishing in a rapidly changing climate. Santoro delves through history to find new futures, and fervently hopes her grandchildren can walk amongst the trees. Santoro has served as the Gallery Director for the UMass Lowell since 2014, and was awarded an Artist Resource Trust grant for DRAW Lowell: confluence in 2024. She was honored with ‘Best in Show’ by curators Lauren Szumita and Marie Picard Craig in April 2024 and a Peter McCollum Staff Choice award in the Fitchburg Art Museum’s Regional Exhibition of Art and Craft in June of 2024. Her 20 piece silkscreen ‘Perseverance Amidst the Regolith’ is traveling to Santiago, Chile in April 2025 as part of the ‘Parallelo’ exhibit at the the MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO. Santoro holds a BA in Studio Art from Wellesley College and an MFA in Studio Art from the Maine College of Art & Design.
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Interested in being a part of the action? As April approaches we will need volunteers for everything from administrative tasks to setting up folding chairs. Please contact us through the link below to join the fun.
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