I can remember sitting on Grammy Carrie's bed with a box of buttons, a scrap of cloth, a threaded needle and sewing away as long as that thread lasted and asking for more when I came to the end. I remember Grammy Lee giving me needlework kits to stitch, beautiful embroideries and more. I started on the fiber arts road literally as a toddler sewing buttons onto scraps of cloth and it blossomed from there. My parents bought my first sewing machine for me when I was in the 8th grade and I never looked back.
Monique Crabb (b. 1982), a Mexican-American artist whose work represents an interplay of narrative, identity, and symbolism that speaks to the constraints of societal structures and of the human body.
Crabb received her BFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art and MFA at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Intermedia + Digital Arts. For nearly a decade she contributed to the Baltimore City arts community as co-director of Current Space, an artist-run gallery, studios, and performance space.
Lesley Riley never intended to be a full-time, professional artist. She just followed her passion in the small blocks of time she carved out while raising six children. Now, as an internationally known instructor and multi-media artist, Lesley works in botanical printing, mixed and digital media, paint and of course, fabric. In 1999 she turned her initial passion for fabric, photos, color and the written word into a dream occupassion that continues to delight and inspire creatives and art lovers everywhere.
Giulia Piera Livi is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting and installation. Her immersive rooms employ hyper-cohesive color and abstract forms to work out ideas of multi-functional art objects and curated domesticity. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally with notable shows at the Delaware Contemporary Museum (Wilmington, DE), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn, NY), Governor's Island Art Fair (NY), Mono Practice (Baltimore, MD), Guest Spot @ the REINSTITUTE (Baltimore, MD), Untitled Space (New York, NY), VAE Gallery (Raleigh, NC), and Walter Otero Contemporary Art (
After earning an undergraduate degree in Painting and Printmaking at Cornell University, I spent a year working and studying in Paris, France until relocating to Baltimore, to earn a graduate degree at The Maryland Institute, College of Art, (MICA). I have won a Maryland State Arts Council Award multiple times in different categories, a Trawick Prize, and I have been published in various publications including twice in New American Paintings. I have exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions across the country and internationally.
Working at the intersection of art, culture, and politics, Ann Stoddard is an interdisciplinary artist who explores underlying connections across media, including video, installation, electronics, animation, sculpture, site-work, as well as painting, drawing, photography, and printmaking. Ann Stoddard makes art that explores space- the space around and between us, the biosphere, the noisy public space of political debate, and the cultural landscape in which art can reveal connections and challenge divisions.
Meredith S. K. Boas (formerly Meredith S. Keating) is a life-long artist and arts advocate who comes from a long line of artists and entreprenuers. She has studied many artistic mediums, and has a bachelor's degree in Integrated Arts and four associate degrees in the disciplines of photography, graphic design and multimedia, video production, and visual communications.
Yam Chew Oh is a multidisciplinary, multilingual artist and educator who explores notions of self, family, and circumstance through abstraction, language, and the everyday. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Asia, and Australia, and featured in Commotion, Lumina Journal, The Match Factory, Studio Visit, and Velocity. Oh is Faculty at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he received an MFA in Fine Arts and teaches studio art. He is a writing tutor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a member of the international collective Atlantika. More at www.yamchewoh.com.
Caidy Lynn is a mixed media artist living in Maryland. She has a B.A in Drawing and Painting from Towson University and an MFA in Curatorial Practice and Art Criticism from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Caidy Lynn uses printmaking, sculpting, drawing, painting, collage, and fiber to create artwork which explores ideas of identity, femininity and the divergence between human and animal. Evoking ideas of discomfort and repulsion she encourages viewers to engage with how unnatural being human can sometimes feel.