Social Fabric (Virtual) Exhibiting Artists Talk

Denim Artwork by Jim Arendt, Art, Jeans, Denim ,Textile, Fabric, Fiber Arts,

Join us for an illuminating conversation with four of the exhibiting artists from Social Fabric: Textiles & Contemporary Issues. Held virtually, artists Jim Arendt, Letitia Huckaby, Aubrey Longley-Cook and Tamara Kostianovsky will join us from across the country to discuss the themes present in their works and how their practices have evolved to include textiles. Senior Curator Francine Weiss and Social Fabric Co-Curator Megan Horn will facilitate a conversation around adaptation and reuse, human rights and social justice, climate change and sustainability, the reaffirmation and celebration of communities, gender, ethnic, and racial identities, themes that are present in the compelling works of these artists.

Free, reservation is required to receive the live stream link.

Thumbnail image by Aubrey Longley-Cook
Banner image by Tamara Kostianovsky

Jim Arendt is an Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Gallery Director at Coastal Carolina University. He received his BFA from Kendall College of Art & Design and his MFA from the University of South Carolina. He has participated in residency programs including The Fields Project in Illinois, Arrowmont’s Tactility Forum, and From Waste to Art VI in Baku, Azerbaijan. He’s been invited to teach at Penland School of Craft and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.

Recently, Arendt received First Prize during Fiberarts International 2019, was short-listed for The 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art and a 2018 finalist for the Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA. He has received the South Carolina Arts Commission Visual Artist Fellowship 2014 and his work received the $50,000 top prize at ArtFields 2013. His work was chosen for the 2013 Museum Rijswijk Textile Biennial, Netherlands, and he has work include in the Arkansas Art Center’s permanent collection of contemporary craft. He lives and works in South Carolina.

Letitia Huckaby (b. 1972, lives in Fort Worth) received a BA in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, a BFA in Photography from the Art Institute of Boston, and an MFA in Photography from the University of North Texas, Denton. She has exhibited at the Tyler Museum of Art, Harlem School of the Arts, The McKenna Museum of African American Art in New Orleans, Camden Palace Hotel in Cork City, Ireland, and the 2013 Texas Biennial at Blue Star Contemporary. Her work is included in such collections as the Library of Congress, McNay Art Museum, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, and the Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection at Scripps College, Claremont, CA. Huckaby was a featured artist in MAP2020: The Further We Roll, The More We Gain at the Amon Carter Museum and State of the Art 2020 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Beautiful Blackness, a solo exhibition of new work, was presented at Foto Relevance, Houston, in 2020. Letitia lives and works in Forth Worth, Texas.

Tamara Kostianovsky is a Latinx artist whose work addresses themes including the environment, violence, and consumer culture, often employing discarded clothing to create visceral and intricate sculptures and installations. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions El Museo del Barrio NY; The Jewish Museum NY; Nevada Museum of Art, NV; Bienal Sur, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Musee du Textile et de la Mode, Cholet, France; Children’s Museum of Manhattan, NY, and many others.  She has presented solo exhibitions at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Fuller Craft Museum, Boston, MA; Slag Gallery, NY; RX Gallery, Paris, France; Ogden Contemporary Arts, UT,  the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, MI, and other venues. Kostianovsky is the recipient of distinguished awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, WBUR, the Village Voice, Marie Claire, La Repubblica, El Diario New York, Colossal, and Hyperallergic, among others. Selected Residencies include Yaddo; Wave Hill Gardens, LMCC, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Franconia Sculpture Park. Kostianovsky received a BFA from the National School of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Aubrey Longley-Cook (he/him) is a Los Angeles based artist who creates hand-stitched embroideries and stop-motion animations. He combines traditional craft-making with new media to transform and reanimate images through stitched abstraction and pixelation. He has notably shown work at Craft Contemporary and the LODGE (Los Angeles), Leslie-Lohman Museum (New York), Museum of Quilts and Textiles (San José), Textile Center (Minneapolis), Barbara Archer Gallery (Atlanta), and online with peer to space (Berlin) and Pelican Bomb (New Orleans). His work was included in the 2019 British Textile Biennial.

Longley-Cook’s work has been featured in various publications including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Journal of Modern Craft, Art Papers, WUSSY, and them. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.