Tildy Bayar is a musician, teacher, writer, editor and web developer who takes pictures for fun.
Megan Dorko is a graphic designer from Yardley, Pennsylvania. She received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Communications from Shippensburg University.
Marie H. Elcin is a fiber artist and arts educator whose work revolves around impressions of the urban environment usually interpreted through stitch. For this exhibition she has ventured into her second love- print and paper. She has a BFA from Moore College of Art and Design and an Masters in Art Education from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She strives to pass on fiber traditions in public school artist-in-residence programs and as an instructor at Fleisher Art Memorial.
Allison Frick draws her inspiration for her text based works from vintage maps, discarded playing cards, and the words and works of others.She has shown her work in student shows at Moore College of Art and Design as well as in group shows at The Gleaners, Red Hook Coffee Shop, and the Bean Café. She received her BFA in Textile Design from Moore in 2007 and her MLS from Drexel University in 2011. She currently resides in South Philadelphia.
Sara Headley lives in Northern New Mexico. She has a background in theater, radio and teaching. Today she stays at home with her three children.
A BFA graduate of Tyler School of Art 2007, Aaron Mannino is currently Shofuso House and Garden’s Artist-in-Residence. His focus has been to explore the fluidity of cultural identity within the fluctuation between his American heritage and an enduring fascination with Japan. Through a practice that includes sculptural installation, photography, printmaking, filmmaking, formal language study, and a filter of his learned western perspectives, Aaron manifests interpretations of traditional and modern Japanese culture. Projects in filmmaking, analytical film writing (for the blog cinedelphia.com and the newspaper Korean Quarterly), and site-specific installation have allowed Aaron to participate in large events like the Project Twenty1 Film Festival in Philadelphia, as well as receive a Heritage Philadelphia grant for a public art commission. In turn, his artwork has reached a wide audience that will continue through his 2012 year-long residency with Shofuso.
Oompah‘s first memories of having a fascination with knitwear are of pushing his head into the sleeve of his wool sweater at the age of two, although it probably started even earlier, in the pram. Throughout childhood and adolescence this tactile enjoyment grew in importance and complexity, as he found ways to immerse himself entirely in knitted wool, and discovered that his fantasies extended to his appreciation of the opposite sex as well.
Alongside his fetishization of knitwear, Oompah also developed a talent for drawing, one
that would later lead his other self into a successful career in film animation. Inevitably, this talent also offered a way to explore his fantasies of a woollen world that somehow seemed to elude him in real life. Yes, he would sometimes see a girl wearing a soft, thick sweater or cardigan. Maybe she wore a woollen scarf, or a hat, but Oompah dreamed of finding a girl who would revel in wearing all of these at once, and more, and the drawings were his way of making it real.
In Oompah’s woolly world, men and women constantly test their limits of how long they
can stay immersed in wool, and in how many layers. Wool and sex are inseparable and
the ribs, stitches and cables of the knitwear take on the erotic qualities of naked flesh.
This, combined with a certain humorous take on human sexuality, is the art of Oompah.
A trained percussionist and composer with studies at New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music, Nadia Severns’ involvement in Ethnic music and composition provided the discipline and intellectual tools necessary for designing knitwear and jewelry. Nadia has worked as a knitting pattern designer since 1979 and has designed and created prototypes for magazines such as Vogue Knitting, Knitter’s, Women’s Day Christmas Crafts, Women’s Day Crafts & Needlework, and Family Circle Knitting as well as several yarn companies including Manos (Fairmount Fibers), Brown Sheep, Classic Elite, and Skacel. Her skiwear designs, worked by production knitters in Peru and China, have been sold at Coldwater Creek, Lord and Taylor, and Daytons. Her designs and patterns have been featured in several books, including three of the Vogue Knitting To Go collections and two of the Knitter’s Dozen books. Nadia’s sweater featured on the cover of Knitter’s African issue caught Bill Cosby’s attention and led to the production of sweaters for the women on his second television series.
Nadia is also involved in the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project, a grass roots effort to draw attention to the plight of the coral reefs through fiber art, and has been cited for her innovative work with plastic bottles and recycled materials. The Reef Project continues to gain the attention of an engaged public, spawning Satellite Reefs during its travels around the world. The Hyperbolic Crochet Reef has been shown at various galleries around the world, from NYC to Dublin and back again. Just a few of the galleries that have shown the reef include: The Smithsonian in Washington DC, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC, The Science Gallery, Dublin, The Hayward in London, Track 16, Los Angeles and NYU’s Broadway Windows, NYC.
Madeleine Shepherd grew up in 1960s Edinburgh, surrounded by textiles and photography. Her first bedroom was converted from her father’s darkroom and her mother’s upholstery work furnished it. The skills for both these arts were part of her world, while her formal education was in mathematics and a broad range of sciences. Little wonder, then, that she took an interest in the early history of photography as a tool for scientific illustration. Among these researches the work of Anna Atkins was an inspiring discovery. Shepherd’s current photographic work comprises an ongoing series of studies of the structure of lace fabrics using the cyanotype printing technique pioneered by Atkins in the 1840s. For more information about Madeleine’s cyanotype prints and the other strands of her photographic and fibre art see www.madeleineshepherd.co.uk
Amber Dorko Stopper’s (curator, author of The Knitting Tarot) knitting has been featured on the acclaimed artblog and exhibited in the Korean and American Joomchi show in Heyri Artist Village and Cheongju Craft Museum, Korea. An exhibit of her knitting related to transcultural family, Open To Some Unknowns, is part of Juneteenth Olean, sponsored by the African American Center for Cultural Development in Olean, New York.
Lisa Annelouise Rentz lives and works in Beaufort SC, where Sea Island cotton was once, in the 18th & 19th Centuries, grown and sought-after worldwide. Her work has been published by literary magazines in the United States and Australia, and performed by Liars’ League London.
Nikki Virbitsky has been educating through art in Philadelphia since 2001, when she began holding art workshops in public schools throughout the region. In 2002, she co-founded Art Hour, a low cost art program for pre-school and grade school children in the city. Her love of teaching brought her to Fleisher Art Memorial in 2005. Her vision is one filled with candy, vintage toys, and the remains of pop culture. Her imaginative work is a delicious mishmash of syrupy cute and deviously eerie. Her paintings and embroideries have been shown at galleries locally and nationally including Mew Gallery, The Kin Ship Gallery, and Village Art Center. Nikki’s commissions are part of private collections throughout the nation, and her unique hand-dyed and handspun yarn is used by fiber artists from around the globe.
