Casey Dressell, Heather Jones and Genevieve Lavalle

Artists gain inspiration from many different avenues, one of the most predominant being their surroundings. In a time where most of us are spending more time than ever at home, it is only natural for inspiration to be drawn from the domestic surroundings of our living spaces. 

Home is a place of comfort, and it is arguably your most personal space. This show is focused on honoring those personal spaces and showcasing individual vulnerability through fiber art. 

This spring, 1628 is excited to be showing 12 regional or national female identifying artists with practices based in fiber. Cocoon: Fibers of Home aims to highlight the relationship between home and self.

These three artists work with fibers very differently from one another and are great examples of the ways fiber can be manipulated. Soft sculptures, quilts and tufted rugs are just some of the many ways fiber is explored in Cocoon: Fibers of Home.

Here we are highlighting three such artists from Cocoon: Fibers of Home:

Casey Dressell is a practicing painter and installation artist living and working in Cincinnati Ohio and Louisville Kentucky. Her interests lie in the intersections of art, nature and the built environment. She teaches at Miami University and the University of Dayton, and is the exhibition coordinator and curator at The Indian Hill Gallery in Cincinnati.

Dressell’s work combines her lived experiences, a DIY mindset, repurposed materials, and a response to chaotic transitions of life and the resulting response to change, movement, adaptation, and a reconnection to nature. Even in dire situations or with limited means, one can reconstruct meaning for themselves. Inherently nomadic and exploratory, her work is a celebration of human intuitive inventiveness, individual expression, and freedom.

Heather Jones is represented by Contemporary Art Matters, Columbus, Ohio; the George Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina; Imlay Gallery, Montclair, New Jersey; Moremen Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky; and Slate Contemporary, Oakland, California. She was selected as an artist-in-residence for Kehinde Wiley’s inaugural class at Black Rock Senegal. A native Cincinnatian, Jones studied art history at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning, earning both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts (ABT).

Her work is steeped in the history of quilt making and a vast group of unknown female makers, and the subject of her work is unequivocally feminist. She chooses to work with fabric rather than paint, in reference and reverence to the fact that for many years the fiber arts were often the only type of art that a woman was encouraged to practice.

Genevieve Lavalle  is a fiber artist from Des Moines, Iowa currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She grew up obsessively practicing art and started her own business selling Pom Pom earrings a few years ago. She pushed her small business from making Pom Poms into her current obsession—tufting.

Her tufted works are made for the wall and the floor. She finds inspiration from creating intricate detailed landscapes inspired by nature and the female figure.


All exhibit pieces are for sale. If you are interested in seeing the exhibition virtually, click here. If interested in purchasing or displaying art in the 1628 Coworking gallery, please contact us at art@tamaras.wpenginepowered.com.

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