MFA Fibers Thesis show by SCAD graduate student, Caroline E Hughes.

COMPLETE SHOW DATES RUN FROM MAY 25, 2019 - JUNE 21, 2019.

In this show, Caroline has used her technical skill and knowledge of historic textiles to work through questions of craft, artifact, tacit knowledge, obsolescence, and the narratives connected to the places of craft practice. Influenced by the ideas of the Craftsman Movement this show includes woven and wrapped textile work which reposition past forms and describe phenomenological landscape.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I am interested in craft, craftsmanship and the ability of objects and activities to transcend the sum of their parts, and become singularly engaging to the viewer. I have a personal connection to craft which was nurtured and developed from childhood. Skill sets involved in farming and textile work have been built and maintained through the generations and these inform foundational concepts. My ideas are not nostalgic, but rather representative of the out-of-time life I live. For any society, the role of the past is to bring understanding to current conclusions and help advance towards the future. Joined with a connection to place, this idea becomes individually meaningful. The field of craft arrests attention through its supposed out-of-place-ness in a world of mass replication. By nature, crafted objects hold tangible connection to personal past because they do not exist independently of the skill required to produce them. I believe in craft that extends past artifact since the craftsman, through active engagement, synthesizes a mindset of excellence with their daily life. With weaving, wrapping, spinning, dying, and embroidery I consider the role of the craftsman, the function of fine craft, the role of the maker, the aggregation of human knowledge and experience in the everyday, and the reciprocative natures of craft and landscape. These topics help me to understand what the role of the object I produce is in the world in which it necessarily exists.