Woven Stories

Featured Solo Exhibitions

Ray Beldner, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, Victoria Potrovitza, Katherine Stocking-Lopez, Nicola Vruwink

Installations

Rebecca Campbell, Peter Hiers, R.Rex Parris High School, Meriel Stern, Victor Wilde

Group Fiber Exhibition

Orly Cogan, Mike Collins, Valerie Daval, Terri Friedman, Gina Herrera, Anne Hieronymus, Uma Rani Iyli, Sandra Lauterbach, Karen Lofgren, Suchitra Mattai, Art Moura, Maria E. Piñeres, Vojislav Radovanovic, Joy Ray, Leisa Rich, Samuelle Richardson, Cindy Rinne, Nike Schroeder, Annie Seaton Lisa Solomon, Sandra Vista, Dana Weiser, Diane Williams

Ray Beldner

Ray Beldner uses found imagery from magazines, books, posters, and catalogs to create his dense, textural collages. He then mounts the collages to museum board and cuts eat piece into a unique shape. Like many of Beldner’s past projects, these Untitled Shaped Collages explore the idea of value: each small clipping is stripped of its historical significance and is appreciated for its more formal qualities such as texture, color, pattern, and shape. The works are “woven” together to create a new, visually active image.

Ray Beldner is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in many public and private collections. Born in San Francisco, Beldner received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Mills College. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, and has taught sculpture, interdisciplinary studies, and professional practices at the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, and the University of California in Santa Cruz.

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Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor

In Blamethirst and Hate Stayed the Ending, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor uses familiar animal-like forms to call attention to the struggles of the human experience, and the intersection between nature and culture. These creatures reach their physical and mental limits as they struggle to stand upright – bits of their armor-like coverings begin to unravel, their bodies distort, and their apparent fatigue lends an all-too-familiar sense of vulnerability.

O’Connor gathered her materials for these sculptures from second-hand shops and thrift stores, reworking each element through cutting, sewing, ripping, wrapping, roping, tying, and stiffening, to create a surface that feels simultaneously distressed and beautiful. The salvaged materials (boxes, couches, bedding, blankets, pillows, Afghans) used by O’Connor rest on a skeleton of broken down furniture. The weight of these materials are quite heavy, and require “crutches” for support.

Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor received her BFA from California State University, Long Beach, and her MFA from the University of California, Davis. She has shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions in California, as well as throughout the US and Canada. Her work has been featured in several publications including Juxtapoz Magazine, ArtForum, Artillery Magazine, and more. Elisabeth has taught studio art classes at the University of Washington, Seattle, Cal State University, Long Beach, and currently teaches as UC Davis. 

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Victoria Potrovitza

No Exit and Landscape by Dusk by Victoria Potrovitza were created by embroidering vibrant-colored thread into canvas and applying gouache or acrylic paint. Her background in architecture influences her abstract compositions, and she often references universal tribal symbols, drawing upon personal and shared history.

Potrovitza is a contemporary abstract fiber artist with her MS degree in Architecture from UAUIM, Romania. A significant part of her career was dedicated to creating wearable art with a focus on hand-painted silk, and her collections have been featured at New York Fashion Week. During the last decade, Potrovitza shifted her focus from fashion to embroidery. Her artwork is featured online at Saatchi Art, and has been exhibited in the United States, Israel, and Romania. She lives and works in Lancaster, California.

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Katherine Stocking-Lopez

Using natural forms, Katherine Stocking-Lopez investigates her personal experience of womanhood and motherhood, as well as the limits of gender and the human body. Inspired by the inevitability of change, Katherine stitches soft fibers, beads, and found objects together reflect on her struggles with anxiety, infertility, pregnancy loss, postpartum depression, and the imperfections of life.

“Growth is inherently beautiful; seeds sprout, flowers bloom, love grows. But when things keep growing, or grow where they shouldn’t, growth can constrict and choke. Depression grows in the dark. Anxieties sprout from deep in the mind. Sickness clusters and bursts like spores. A garden can have both a tangle of thorns and a bloom of flowers. The duality of nature as creator and destroyer is present in my work.”

Katherine Stocking-Lopez is a mixed media artist with a specialty in combining traditional drawing and sculpture work. She combines the family tradition of needlework with the complexity of emotions that family itself inspires. Katherine won Best of Exhibition at MOAH’s CEDARFEST juried art show in 2017, and first place in the 3-D/Mixed Media category at CEDARFEST 2016.

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Nicola Vruwink

In Please and Your Everything, Nicola Vruwink crochets magnetically coated plastic film from cassette tapes, rather than the usual yarn. Employing obsolete materials such as cassette tapes is just one way that Vruwink draws attention to the loneliness of modern urban life, the fast pace of technological advancements, and the detritus that humans leave behind. The act of crocheting these typographical works provides the artist with a sense of symmetry and meditative order in the midst of our chaotic world.

Originally from Iowa, Vruwink has lived and worked in Los Angeles for the past fifteen years. She received her MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the West Coast. She has also been featured in several publications such as the Los Angeles Times, ArtForum, and the Huffington Post. Vruwink is currently an assistant professor at ArtCenter College of Design, and is adjunct faculty at Santa Monica College and El Camino College.