Intertwined: A Collaborative Exhibition Between SCRAP & Ruth's Table

Kira Dominguez Hultgren is a U.S.-based artist, weaver, and educator. She studied postcolonial theory and literature at Princeton University, and studio arts and visual and critical studies at California College of the Arts. Their research interests include material and embodied rhetorics, re-storying material culture, and weaving as a performative critique of the visual.

Dominguez Hultgren weaves with the material afterlife of a so-called multiracial family: Chicanx-Indigenous-Indian-Hollywood Hawaiian-Brown-Black. Instead of being passed down, weaving and textile processes are brought up, resurrected from family stories and fabrics. Dominguez Hultgren builds looms to weave into the frayed edges of lost language, culture, traditions, and lives that were strategically cut-off in past generations.

"I highlight these ephemeral moments in my paintings by using fluorescent, metallic, or phosphorescent paint and mica that flickers, glows or is shadowed in different light conditions. I paint many unruled and overlapping lines in three colors. This creates the appearance of a handwoven mesh or an undulating soft geometry of shifting space. Upon viewing, the visual effects are different, person to person. The feeling of slipping time and optical confusion remind the viewer that you are seeing something unknown reveal itself."  

- Mel Prest

"I received a wildly, colorful crochet afghan blanket for a wedding gift from my uncle. He told me it was made by my mother. I broke into tears overjoyed with holding something so precious. We lost her in 1998 to a heinous crime. Twenty-four years later I honor her through these drawings I consider portraits. This drawing A Piece Of Her In Monochrome is part of a series of drawings called A Piece of Her, A Piece of Us and is a story about processing loss, making family connections, and celebrating life."

Mercy Hawkins’ art practice is born of a love of the land, natural spaces, and the life that inhabits them. The work seeks to bridge and connect the human world with the natural world. Hawkins reveals a new language, expanding a lexicon of the possible, as it relates to the sensorium of the living body, both in and as the natural world. Her research spans various human relationships to the natural world through history, literature and poetry. Hawkins applies this research within her studio practice combining craft-based manipulation of traditional and nontraditional fine art materials.

 

"As a Korean-American immigrant woman, I have always lived in the “in-between” space where the threads of one’s identity converge. This intersection is a balancing act—and although never fully achieved, the act defines me. I simultaneously hold the past, the unknown, and collective dreams; and sometimes, I am lucky enough to translate it through my work."

My practice and choice of materials is an expression where conventional language fails. Fiber speaks to me, because it holds deep wisdom from deep time. I wonder if my ancestors held horsehair, wool, ramie, and silk in their hands as I do, or if they also saw the face of the cosmos in their weavings. The past holds possibilities for now."

- Michelle Yi Martin

Michelle Yi Martin is a self-taught weaver, born in Seoul, South Korea, and based in San Francisco, California. Yi Martin has been an educator of the humanities, interdisciplinary art, and progressive education for over 20 years. She has developed an art practice in this intersection of history, human engagement, craft, experimentation, and fine art.

"My work starts with my interest in frequency driven alphabetic structures, cryptography and numerical algorithmic systems. I designed an analog program which allows language-based inputs to be translated into a directional code that dictates the angle of each layer of lines that make up a painting. Each line is painted one at a time using a rig in my studio to maintain a constant angle and, rather than using a traditional brush, I chose hard to control graffiti mops and pinstriping tools as my means of application. The resulting lines have a waiver or flutter, and their intersections result in colors mixing both on the canvas and optically."

- Mikey Kelly

"My inquiry begins with the materials and processes specific to growing up in a shoemaking family. In the craft tradition of huarache–making (Mexican indigenous sandals), repetitive gestures such as the weaving of leather, the hammering of nails, and the painting of finishing details inform my current practice. The physical presence and signifying potential of these materials and gestures inspire me to analyze how objects are made, question who makes them and the physical or social conditions involved in their making.

While my chosen color palette is contrived as “neutral” I convey hierarchical power dynamics represented in the chromatic gamut of beige, brown, and black. I want the viewer to see my works as “racialized abstractions” and consider social dynamics and colorism within our culture."

- Pilar Aguero Esparza

"My practice investigates the poetics of self construction. It speaks to untangling a personal inner truth from the collective voices of community and culture. Primarily working in casting, dye work and weaving, I fabricate sculptures of large cloth draped and snagged by  supporting fixtures.

I approach the loom as a Colonial object, a relic tied to the industrial history of  bringing our current world into being. Simultaneously, the un-fixed drapery of my sculptures  pose cloth as a contextually informed material, exhibiting the mutable realities of identity that queer lives are proving possible."

- Ricki Dwyer

“My work is about being okay with the flaws and imperfections of our experiences.” 

- Steven Lopez

 

Steven Vasquez Lopez was born in Upland, California and currently lives in San Francisco. Raised in Southern California in a Mexican-American household, Lopez's early obsession with architecture, manual labor and bold fashion continues through his meticulous hand-drawn ink on paper. 

"As a weaver I am always interested in what can be communicated through made objects. When I can share the production process and expose people to the tools, techniques and sensual physicality of weaving it can initiate powerful dialogue. When I produce things myself I enjoy making blankets to act as a cozy warming enveloping presence. The Small Shelter series is the culmination of this intention to provide warmth and cozy colorful protection. Touch the magic!"

- Travis Meinolf