DVAA is located at 704 Catharine Street in Philadelphia.
April 4 – April 21, 2024
Curated by Samantha M Connors
Featuring Dye Club Artists: Caresh, Laura Hricko, Angela McQuillan, Cindy Stockton Moore, Cait Nola, Miriam Singer, Mary Smull
From Samantha:
Within each piece of fabric that clothes us, keeps us warm, cleans our messes, lays coveted in our fabric stash, or sits in a landfill, lays a hidden story of how it got there and the history of textiles spanning across time. In the US, most of us have become separated from these stories as manufacturing processes have shifted to other countries. However, as news stories rise denouncing the working conditions of textile mills and the impact the industry is having on the environment, artists and makers across the world are joining the slow fiber movement. Artists involved in this movement encourage a regional process of intentional making in partnership with local farmers, makers, and the environment.
A Shared Table highlights the work of Philly Dye Club, an informal monthly meet-up started in 2021, between local artists from a variety of disciplines with an interest in natural color. Attending a Dye Club meeting feels like entering a portal into a space of research and collaboration often only seen in academic spaces, artist residencies, and family gatherings. The artists get together to create and share resources over a shared meal, often bringing materials they’ve gathered from their individual gardens, family heirlooms, and dye recipes they found in archival texts. The space they’ve created thrives on individual and collaborative interrogation into their fields, with dyes as the throughline between them. The exhibition at Da Vinci Art Alliance strives to introduce each viewer to the individual work happening within each artist’s practice because of their membership within Philly Dye Club, as well as the feeling one encounters when attending a monthly meetup. A Shared Table invites the viewer to learn about dye processes, find their own shared community of investigation, and look closer at our individual and collective consumption within the fiber industry.
A Shared Table was on view at Da Vinci Art Alliance starting April 4-21, 2024
Workshops were held throughout the month run by Philly Dye Club members as part of Everyday Futures Fest.