It would be impossible to capture the whole of Fiber Philadelphia in a blog post. There were over 40 scheduled shows of fiber-based artwork. I probably saw about 25 of them while I was there, most of them on one marathon day. It was exciting to see such varied and high quality work and I came away reassured that this is the time to be working in fiber. Sure Fiber Philadelphia was a bubble, but it was our bubble.

This blog post is not a review. It is a sampling of artwork from some of the shows that stood out to me because of a number of reasons: the quality of the artwork, the setting it was shown in, the unusual pairings of materials, or the way it was displayed. There is so much that is not shown here simply because I didn’t get a photo or my photos weren’t good.

There were several things I noticed over all the shows. One was that most of the artwork I saw was in neutral colors. In general, color was used sparingly. Whether this was representative of the state of fiber art or it was because of curator’s choice, I don’t know. I also noticed a lot of three-dimensional work. This may be because I had my 3-d radar on, but there was a lot of it.

Here are photos from Snderman-Works Gallery, Wexler Gallery, Muse Gallery, Space 1026, Borowsky Gallery, Outside/Inside the Box, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Some of these were big shows, some small.  Because of time and space I’ve only given the artist’s name and the name of the piece. I’ve done my best to attribute the work correctly.

I hope you enjoy my small and biased tour of Fiber Philadelphia.

8th International Fiber Biennial at Snyderman-Works Gallery

 

Narrative Thread at Wexler Gallery

 

 

 

Sara Horne at Muse Gallery

 

 

Optical Fiber at Space 1026

 

 

Mending = Art at Gershman Y, Borowsky Gallery

 

 

Outside/Inside the Box at Crane Arts Building

 

 

 

A Sense of Place at Philadelphia Art Alliance