About this Event
Elizabeth Leach Gallery presents Contemporary Textiles, a group exhibition featuring work by MK Guth, Elizabeth Hohimer, Ellen Lesperance, Mary Ann Peters, Vo Vo, and Anna Von Mertens. Coinciding with Portland Textile Month, the exhibition brings together six artists from four states whose distinct practices respond to this year’s theme, Layers of Resilience.
Through weaving, knotting, knitting, stitching, drawing, and participatory performance, these artists transform personal memories, cultural histories, labor, protest, community, and scientific inquiry into material form. The selected works create a rich conversation among six distinct voices while revealing shared threads of resilience, care, resistance, and connection.
Opening Reception: October 1, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
MK Guth incorporates textiles into participatory installations and performances, inviting audiences to braid and sew fabric into collaborative sculptures and tapestries that explore interaction and interconnection.
Elizabeth Hohimer uses a sixteen harness European floor loom and a distinctive double cloth technique to translate the visual languages of Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and Color Field painting into woven works rooted in the landscape and history of the Texas Hill Country.
Ellen Lesperance draws from archives of historic protest movements, transforming the knit garments worn by women activists into meticulous works on paper that honor movements for environmental protection, civil rights, and nuclear disarmament.
Mary Ann Peters challenges historic misrepresentations of Arab immigrants while honoring the craftsmanship and labor of women silk workers in Lebanon, drawing upon her perspective as a second generation Lebanese American artist.
Vo Vo uses textiles to examine systems of production and oppression while offering gestures of care and possibilities for healing. Their large scale tapestries weave together imagery of violence, nature, discovery, and social change.
Anna Von Mertens works at the intersection of art and science, hand stitching star patterns onto hand dyed cotton to connect astronomical events with moments in human history.
Event venue & nearby stays
Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave, Portland, United States
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