Let’s begin in the middle
Let’s begin in the middle examines the contemporary use of fiber arts as a storytelling and memory-recording tool. Showcasing seven fiber artists, the exhibition brings together works that explore fiber beyond its materiality, representing a visual language capable of transmitting a story. Each artist engages textiles, threads, filaments, and more as a site where personal memory intersects with cultural inheritance, where the intimate and the collective intertwine.
Fiber art has long carried narrative, from samplers and quilts to ceremonial cloth and mending practices. Textiles have functioned as archives of lived experience. Beau McCall pays tribute to the history of cotton and indigo workers, once enslaved, through his use of upcycled denim, creating new narratives representative of his community today. Rebecca Kelly honors the land's tradition by using ancestral techniques unique to Pennsylvania. She views her work as a memoir, documenting her memories and experiences. Julie Woodard employs found and reused materials, creating portals into natural and built worlds that are reminiscent of lost loved ones and moments lived. Caitlin McCormack writes personal folkloric traditions and mythology that connect lived memories, trauma, and deep consciousness through crochet sculptural works. Bren Ahearn documents life milestones alongside the mundane minutiae of routine through embroidery samplers. Amy Orr records a period of illness and the challenges of vision impairment through her series Twist Tie Quilt, and uses bones to document family memories and collective grief. Barbara Schulman extensively studies the language of textiles to manipulate the medium and, through her large-format quilts, express the full range of the human experience with spontaneity.
Bren Ahearn
Bren Ahearn is a textile artist based in Philadelphia, PA. He grew up in a crafty 1970s household in which he made sand art, decoupaged, and did other crafts of the day. Ahearn holds an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, CA; and an MFA in Textiles from San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA. He is currently completing continuing education courses in printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Ahearn’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA; the Sacramento Temporary Contemporary Gallery, Sacramento, CA;
The Art Museums of Bergen, Bergen, Norway; and the Local Lore Museum, Kherson, Ukraine, to mention a few.
Statement
“I use textile crafts to explore masculinity’s conflicting messages, and I typically use the embroidery sampler form to document how I’ve been educated to be a man in US society and to document memories. My more recent active shooter / school shooting pieces (‘run, hide, fight’) are another series of samplers, documenting my work in educational institutions, where we were trained on how to respond to active shooter situations. These pieces, with the directions from the active shooter workshops, document my ongoing education."
Rebecca Kelly
Rebecca Kelly is a visual artist specializing in book and textile arts. She was a featured local artist in the landmark 2025-2026 exhibition Here and Now: 100 Years of LUAG, 100 Local Artists at Lehigh University Art Galleries. Her work has been exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library, the South Haven Arts Center in Michigan, the Phillips’ Mill Art Association Annual Juried Show, the Hunterdon Art Museum Members Show, and St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. From 2009 to 2011, she curated the award-winning Bucks County Community ArtMobile exhibition, transFORMations: Art Made from Recycled and Reused Materials, which was seen by more than 40,000 people.
Since moving to Pennsylvania, Rebecca forages for barks, flowers, nuts, weeds, and uses materials from her garden in her art practice. She embroiders florals on botanically bundle dyed silk. Makes marks on handmade paper with natural inks and watercolors.
Statement
“My artistic practice is rooted in a deep respect for the earth and the ancestral history of the land I work upon, honoring the traditional territory of the Lenape people of Pennsylvania, where I live. I am also influenced by the dye techniques used by the Moravian sect who pioneered the dye industry in Pennsylvania as early as the 1700's. The fabrics I use are sustainable materials reclaimed from the landfill or thrifted. I weave traditional practices with contemporary abstract art techniques."
Beau McCall
Beau McCal, proclaimed by American Craft magazine as “The Button Man”, creates visual and wearable art by hand-sewing clothing buttons onto mostly upcycled fabrics, materials, and objects. His artworks, offering commentary on topics such as pop culture and social justice are held in the permanent collection of numerous public institutions including the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; The Museum at FIT, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. In 2024, McCall debuted his first-ever retrospective and exhibition catalog, titled Beau McCall: Buttons On! at Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA. The exhibition is currently on a nationwide tour. In McCall's words, his artistic practice is rooted in the belief that, “With a teeny tiny button you can create, you can have a voice, and you can inspire.”
Statement
“Buttons are a universal fastener, connecting the world through an everyday object. Through this medium, I create visual and wearable artworks by hand-sewing predominantly secondhand and donated buttons onto mostly upcycled fabrics and materials. Expanding upon my primary focus on button-embellished works, I incorporate buttons within my broader practice, including collage and time-based media, extending their role as both material and storytelling device. My work excavates the memories embedded within these objects, often passed down through generations. By reimagining the button beyond its functional role, I stretch its physical and conceptual possibilities. I use buttons to explore themes of identity, memory, pop culture, and social justice. My practice is rooted in the Black cultural tradition of “making something out of nothing.” I reimagine the humble button as a signifier of ancestral legacy—transforming an overlooked material into a space of connection, reflection, and joy."
Caitlin McCormack
Philadelphia-based fiber artist Caitlin McCormack has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Elijah Wheat Showroom, Field Projects, Hashimoto Contemporary, Peep Projects, The Mütter Museum, Museum Rijswijk, The Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Feinkünst Krüger, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Future Fair, and BravinLee Programs in NYC. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, BOMB, Juxtapoz, Whitehot Magazine, Smithsonian, and Bust Magazine. In addition to holding teaching positions at PAFA and Hussian College of Art & Design, McCormack has been an artist-in-residence at The Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, The Wassaic Project, Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson, The Peter Bullough Foundation, and The C-Scape Dune Shack in Provincetown, MA. McCormack received a 2021 Joseph Robert Foundation grant and the Woodmere Art Museum's Maurice Freed Memorial Prize in 2023.
Statement
“Exploring queerness, mental illness, and existential dread through an uncanny, occasionally humorous lens, I contemplate societal reluctance to legitimize gendered craft and regard crochet as a behavioral response to apocalyptic conditions. Inspired by folkloric botanical motifs and artifacts, museum displays, sci-fi/body horror cinema, and abundant solitude paired with an overactive imagination, each object is a thought's unraveling relic, tethered to a surface and viewable from a distance.
These objects externalize the ways in which something intangible can attain monolithic permanence, suggesting how memory and identity become entwined over time. Presented as mysterious figures and artifacts crawling with complex rhizospheres, they appear to be solid yet in a constant state of unraveling. These works express my internal trepidations as a queer person inhabiting a volatile world and contribute to craft's conversations surrounding hierarchy, grief, memory, and ecology.
Using hand-crocheted cotton thread, dredged in glues and foraged pigments, I fashion soft forms into rigid compositions. This process recontextualizes moments of despair and rage as ornate, provocative, sometimes comical specimens. Obscured by overgrowths of lacelike flowers and fibrous vines, each object's integrity is reinforced by complex networks, just as we are all strengthened by the intricate ecosystems of our lived experiences."
Amy Orr
Amy Orr is a multimedia and street artist based in Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in Fibers from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Elkins Park, PA; an MA, Art Education, Concentration in Fibers from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA; and a BFA, Fine Arts from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Israel. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
Barbara Schulman
Barbara Schulman holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Fiber Arts from Kent State University in Ohio, where she also earned an undergraduate degree in Art Education. She has exhibited throughout the United States and in Korea, France, Canada, the Philippines, and twice in the Art in Embassies Program of the U.S. State Department in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. She has lectured on Contemporary American Textiles in England, Scotland, Ecuador, and throughout the United States, including presentations for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council Speaker’s Program.
Her work is in numerous collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the Allentown Art Museum, Lehigh Valley Health Network, American Express Company, Carolina Power and Light, and has been shown in Surface Design Journal, Fiberarts Magazine, 500 Baskets, and in seven volumes of the Fiberarts Design Books. Her work has been seen in the following exhibitions: Korea Bojagi Forum in Seoul, The Art of Basketry in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Fifth International of Tapestry and Fiber Art in Beauvais, France; The Fiberart International in Pittsburgh, PA; the Quilt National in Athens, Ohio, and in solo exhibitions at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, New Jersey and The Bradbury-Sullivan LGBTQ Community Center, Allentown, PA.
Awarded two Visual Arts Fellowships in Crafts by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Barbara is Professor Emeritus, Kutztown University, and a full-time studio artist.
Statement
“The repetition and invention in textile processes invite me to understand, escape from, comment on, and play with the complexities of the world. A mixed-media fabric artist, I am obsessed with cloth, which I spontaneously dye, paint, design, and cut. Vintage lace, family textiles, and digitally printed cloth are some of my basics for deconstruction, painting, and obsessive machine stitching, which are activated until the energy in the work transports to a realm of real or imagined memories, dreams, and/or fears."
Julie Woodard
Artist Julie Woodard holds a BA in American Studies from Temple University and an MA in Museum Education from the University of the Arts. She has worked in Philadelphia's cultural sector for over twenty years and currently teaches at local art centers, museums, schools, and community hubs. Often experimenting with scale and media, Julie’s practice incorporates elements of collage, applique, embroidery, weaving, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and ceramics. She is also a songwriter, and many of her visual pieces are translated into song.
Julie has created capsule collections for Au Boulot Workwear, and her wearable designs have been showcased by Woolrich, Inc. She was the 2022 Featured Artist for Brooklyn-based FABSCRAP, is an alumna of NextFab's Artisan Accelerator program, and has been featured in commercial and gallery spaces throughout the United States. Following a strong interest in immersive art, recent projects include Embodied Sound, a multimedia exhibition featuring visuals and original music in conversation; Pockets of Light, an interactive installation along the Delaware River Waterfront; an experiential oceanic reading "nook" for the Fringe/Cannonball Festival's presentation of Read Me A World; and Tidal Rock, a functional sea sculpture for the Philadelphia International Airport.
Julie is currently working on two curatorial projects: The Hole Story, an ongoing exploration of creative reuse by over 25 local artists; and Good Grief, a November 2026 exhibition highlighting how grief appears in the work of seven Philadelphia-based artists.
Statement
“Using salvaged textiles, found objects, pigments, and thread, I create impressionistic landscapes, multimedia installations, functional sculptures, and wearable pieces that convey my passion for nature, memory, and creative reuse. Current incarnations pay tribute to my late mother and repurpose family heirlooms, as well as feature vintage goods, cutting room remnants, broken furniture, and street debris.
My artistic practice is rooted in the tension between holding on and letting go, of memorialization and detachment. A self-proclaimed 'doula of discarded things, I transform both trash and sentimental scraps, exploring themes of familial loss, our relationship to place, and climate change. Every piece has a story. Every material is repurposed with purpose."
