Jennifer Talbot, "Cherry Picker," 1999,
mixed media installation

Expanding the traditional boundaries of fiber and textile art, these four artists illuminate an increasingly fluid relationship between the experience of art and the materials of life.

In Lara Lepionka's project Identifying Marks, the personal statements of food service workers were engraved into flatware, etched into plates and glasses, and embroidered into napkins. These personalized items were then used by the restaurant in its daily operation. For this exhibit, Lepionka exhibited a table set with the dishes, flatware, and linens and documentation of how the objects were used. For her project Visible Links, Lepionka displays snapshots of the people involved with the raw materials, manufacturing, distribution and transport of products purchased for Identifying Marks. She obtained photographs by sending out single-use cameras to the people and companies she traced in the United States, Poland, Indonesia, South Africa, and the Caribbean. A poster of the installation was sent to all the individuals who participated.

In Jennifer Talbot's performance and video, Cherry Picker, a performer devours cherries piled high on the surface of a pristine white tablecloth that trails off a table onto the ground into an extended bride's train. The cherries are eaten first in rapid obsession and finally in utter exhaustion. Cherry Picker explores some of the necessary and prescribed activities of the human body: desire, appetite, consumption, nourishment and depletion.

Constructed from synthetic materials, similar to those used in tarps or tents, Christine Tarkowski's Cabin approximates the dwelling once inhabited by the Unabomer, Theodore Kaczynski. A large structure covered in camouflage pattern, Cabin contrasts domestic senses of safety and shelter with collective evocations of aggression and fear.

Referencing a gendered history of stitchery and self-preservation, Anne Wilson's A Chronicle of Days is a collection of 100 framed pieces of white damask tablecloth sprinkled with small spots of human hair, embroidered onto the cloth with tiny hair-like stitches.