Amy Beeler has been a professional jewelry artist for over 20 years. In 2024, she earned her MFA in 3D Studio Art with a concentration in jewelry from Bowling Green State University. Currently, she is developing a new body of work using cotton clothesline, sewn into innovative jewelry and sculptural forms with a domestic sewing machine. Her work explores themes of domesticity, interweaving personal narratives, traditional practices, and the intimate ties shared across generations.

Beeler’s recent work has earned the Distinguished Studio and Creative Arts Award from BGSU and the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s Merit Award. She has been featured in Surface Design Journal as an Outstanding Student Awardee and in Fiber Art Now Magazine as a winner in the ARTwear Exhibition in Print. She currently has the solo show Amy Beeler – Domestic Lines, Quiet Rituals on display at the Robert C. & Susan Savage Community Gallery at The Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio.  

Canadian Vancouver based artist Nicole Dextras creates environmental art that roots nature into our everyday urban experience. She works across diverse media, blending textile arts, natural materials, performance, photography, and film to create ephemeral installations and social interventions.

Her art practice fuses notions of contemporary materiality with eco-fiction, which is immersed in research in alternative materials and methodologies such as working with plants in summer and ice in winter. Her current series The Algae Project was funded by the BC Arts Council of Canada and the Surface Design Association of America. The first creation from this series was featured during the FlowILM event at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC, on October 19, 2024. It has subsequently been shown in Vancouver at the Slow Fashion Season’s fashion show at the Museum of Anthropology and at the Fashion Revolution events in Vancouver.

Dextras has exhibited her work in Canada, the USA, and countries in Asia. Her most recent exhibition A Dressing the Future, the eco-fiction of Nicole Dextras was held at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Texas in May 2022. Other notable exhibitions include: Courants vert, at Espace Fondation EDF in Paris, Modest Forms of Biocultural Hope at the Western Gallery WWU, in Bellingham, WA, and Hybris at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Léon in Spain.

Her work has been featured in Create Naturally by Marcia Young for Schiffer Publishing, the Canadian National Broadcaster’s web series The Exhibitionists, and included as a stamp in the Earth Day collection by the United Nations.

In the fall of 2023, Nicole launched her latest short film Chronos, time of sand, which centers around a resourceful character who survives a catastrophic drought by using desert plants for his sustenance and to weave his climate adapted clothing.

Elin Noble is a textile artist and has been a dyer exploring the boundaries of synthetic and natural dyes for more than 40 years. Elin has lectured, conducted workshops, and exhibited her cloth and quilts across North America, Europe, and Asia. She was formerly a lab manager at PRO Chemical & Dye and is author of the 1998 award winning book, Dyes & Paints: A Hands-On Guide to Coloring Fabric.  

Jesse Aviv grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where a love of math ran parallel to a deep creative influence from his grandmother, celebrated fiber artist Jane Sauer. She taught him basketry at age eight, sparking a lifelong fascination with form and material.

At 16, Aviv moved to Singapore on a scholarship to attend United World College, where his passion for patterns led him to public health. A school-funded gap year took him to clinics in Timor Leste and Swaziland, where he studied patient outcomes and began collecting textiles.

While studying chemistry at Emory University on a full scholarship, Aviv discovered chainmail during a medical leave—and was hooked by its strength, texture, and sculptural potential. After graduating university and working in biotech, he shifted his focus fully to chainmail in 2023. Aviv co-founded Free Maison in 2024, a bold couture and accessories brand redefining the possibilities of metal and movement.

MartyO, an artist based in California, specializes in creating wearable art, assemblages, and sculptures using salvaged textiles and found items. Transitioning from a background in social work advocacy and law practice, she embarked on a new career as an artist in her fifties. MartyO, adheres to zero-waste principles, skillfully transforming discarded, tattered, and stained quilts and linens into distinctive art quilts, garments, and sculptures that convey captivating stories.

With a penchant for taking traditional patchwork and embroidery into the unexpected, MartyO breathes new life into forgotten fabrics. Often the provenance of the textiles remains a mystery, yet her creations give rise to new narratives. Her art is imbued with emotion as she tackles controversial issues, pays homage to the handwork of others, and inspires others to reduce their carbon footprint.

Artist and designer OmarAntonio began his career as a hairstylist in 2000. Over the years of his career OmarAntonio began using hair as a medium, finding different ways to transform hair into fabric to create something quite unusual–wearable art. His inspiration comes from many places including the architectural design of Gothic churches and cathedrals. It’s all about the challenge of creating something strong, regal, feminine, and unique. Over the last 15 years OmarAntonio has created eight dresses, all made out of hair. These dresses have been shown internationally at various showcases in Japan, Africa, Canary Islands, India, Canada, and Spain. The dresses have been shown on fashion runways and on display at museums and art galleries. They’ve also been shown in editorial photo shoots.One dress even made it to the reality competition TV show RuPaul‘s Drag Race.

“As much as I love watching my dresses marched down the runway,” OmarAntonio says, “my dream is to someday have my very own art exhibition, showcasing all eight of my dresses on mannequins. How cool would that be!?”

Hear Omar talk about Dress #3 on our Youtube channel.

Denise Yaghmourian (b. 1967, Bethpage, New York) is a fiber artist creating abstract works using fabric, thread, and unconventional materials such as hook-and-eye tape—typically used in bra and corset making. Her work features expansive fields of color layered with intricate stitching, exploring themes of repetition, structure, and the beauty found in everyday materials. Yaghmourian moved to Arizona at the age of eight and grew up in Phoenix. She spent most of her childhood years swimming in the family pool, exploring the desert environments with friends, and spending time sewing and crocheting with her Armenian grandmother. She earned her BFA from Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona, in studio art and art education. Yaghmourian has participated in national and international exhibitions including Tucson Museum of Art (permanent collection), Visions Museum of Textile Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Udinotti Museum, and Kent State Art Museum.  Yaghmourian currently lives and works in Arizona.

For many years I have been exploring the possibilities of crocheted, interlaced sculptures stiffened into hard mesh-like structures. The web-like fabric defines volume and form. Process becomes a part of the content, and both structure and surface are achieved simultaneously. These mesh sculptures often make statements about enclosures and entrapment. They can suggest the safety of a shelter or a cage from which there is no escape. The vessels take the form of human bodies and body parts, as well as natural and geometric shapes. Interaction between the forms and the themes of containment create work that is both personal and psychologically complex.

I often dwell on the mysterious cycles of death and regeneration. In many of my works, twigs and branches are left inside and are visible in an eerie way through the exterior of the sculpture, often suggesting connections to the human skeletal or circulatory systems. The outer netting obscures the shape within creating a sense of ambiguity in the shadows of the work. On the surface, paint and stitched lines appear and disappear depending on the light and viewing position. Intricate and random patterns are created by the nature of the open mesh structures. All of these elements combine to convey a sense of energy as the viewer moves around my sculpture. Conceptually, the interlaced fibers can lend a wonderful duality—simultaneously creating a delicate quality but also implying the strength of steel mesh—symbolic of the human condition.

Drawing continues to be important to me, and I find that the threads and wires I use mimic the cross hatching and irregularities of my pen and ink drawings. My sculpture evolves into a three-dimensional drawing. Recently, I have been filling the open spaces of the fiber’s netting with modeling paste, having plaster-like consistency. This process creates a surface that focuses on and highlights the lines I draw with stitches, introducing a bas relief of concept, energy, and movement. I often highlight these drawn lines with colors of paint.

As my work evolves, one thing remains consistent: I am engaged in creating works that weave the personal and universal together.

Born in Urbino,  northern Italy, in 1976, Maracole Bijoux graduated from La Scuola Del Libro with a major in Drawing Animation. She successively moved to Rome to earn a master’s in video game design from The European Institute of Design and worked in the animation industry till 2008, when she relocated to Los Angeles, California.  

Interested in art making since an early age, Maracole started exhibiting her artworks at iconic pop art galleries, such as The Hive Gallery & Studios and La Luz De Jesus, till she became a member of The Los Angeles Art Association and transitioned from craft to fine art.  It was only in 2018 that Maracole discovered seed beads, and she transitioned again, this time from fine art to wearable art, as bead weaving slowly turned into her main creative endeavor. A year later she founded Maracole Bijoux, a line of handwoven fine crafted jewelry with seed beads and repurposed vintage beads, that positioned her work in the realm of sustainable fashion.  

Maracole’s beaded work has been published in magazines of art and fashion, such as Findings UK, L’Officiel Spain, BMore Art, Fiber Art Now, and Malvie Magazine. She exhibited her work at prestigious international art jewelry shows, such as Artistar Jewels in Milan and Contemporania in Barcelona.  In the USA, Maracole takes part regularly in fine crafts shows, such as The Smithsonian’s Craft Show and The Palm Beach Fine Craft Show.  

 Since 2020, Maracole teaches workshops online and in person at art centers, museums, and private institutions, such as The Musuem of Beadwork and Craft in America.  In the summer of 2023, she was a resident artist at the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Musuem (Zedet studio) in Athens. 

Öznur Enes was born in 1974 in İzmir, Turkey. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Textile and Fashion Design at the Institute of Fine Arts, Dokuz Eylül University.

Enes held solo exhibitions in 2011 and 2012, and her work has been featured in numerous juried fiber art exhibitions in countries including Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Italy, France, Lithuania, Hungary, and China.

Her artistic practice focuses on the interplay of light and transparency, often incorporating unconventional materials such as animal intestines.

She currently serves as an Associate Professor at Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Textile and Fashion Design.

Gitty Duncan is a multimedia sculptor living and working in Berkeley, CA. She has been an artist and maker her whole life, having grown up surrounded by artists and designers in her extended family.  She attended the Rhode Island School of Design where she carved a niche for herself with glass and ceramics. Later, she attended graduate school at UC Davis, where, in addition to producing a body of ceramics, drawing, and painting, she started teaching puppetry to children. Gitty has taught art to children in schools and community centers around the Bay Area since 1996 and maintains a studio practice with an ever-expanding variety of media.

Shoes and boots were slowly added to the mix starting in 2016.

Currently, she is a visiting artist at Berkeley High School, teaching costume and prop making and design for drama and dance students. She makes custom designed boots and shoes and offers one-on-one shoe making workshops at her home studio. She has recently started exhibiting her work again, in group shows all over the country.

Dorothy McGuinness took her first basket making class in 1987. She has participated in more than 200 basket workshops over the years. She has studied extensively with Jiro Yonezawa, a Japanese basket maker and teacher. Dorothy discovered her medium of choice in 2000, when she took a workshop with Jackie Abrams using watercolor paper as a basket weaving material. She now works exclusively in diagonal twills and mad weave creating contemporary sculptural baskets. What most attracts Dorothy to using paper and paint for weaving is the ability to play with color and pattern. She enjoys exploring the interplay of weaving, color, and design in new sculptural pieces and continues to experiment with various weaving methods and techniques.

Dorothy has participated in numerous local, national, and international shows and has won various national and international awards. In 2007 she participated in a Fiber Arts Certificate Program at the University of Washington Professional and Continuing Education School. She also participated in the EDGE professional development program sponsored by Artist Trust in Seattle, Washington. Dorothy was born in 1961 in Western Washington and currently resides in Everett, Washington.

Following a professional career, I discovered a love for quilting. Although I create small wall quilts and 3D works, my specific passion is designing wearable art featuring unusual surface designs.  

My creative process starts with traditional quilting methods and attempts to elevate them.  I find inspiration in historical periods of fashion and art ranging from ancient Egyptian, Byzantine, and Victorian eras up to vintage 1950’s with an attempt to incorporate these influences into a modern design.   My approach is inherently intuitive, and I attempt to capture random thoughts and incorporate them into a cohesive design concept.  In addition to a strong sense of color and the incorporation of blending in my work, I enjoy unusual embellishment items and surface design methods.  Use of deconstructed pieces from discarded jewelry and sometimes family heirlooms to create focal points within my designs isa favorite technique of mine. In this way I can transform something unwanted into beauty.  

To date I have been recognized with awards in national and international textile and wearable art competitions and acceptance in juried exhibitions, including the Festival of Quilts (UK), Tokyo Great International Quilt Festival, Fiber Art Network’s “xcellence in Fibers, Surface Design Association’s International Fiber Arts; and in exhibitions in print, Studio Art Quilt Associate’s global exhibitions, Craft in America Museum (CA), Pacific International and Mid Atlantic Quilt Festivals, Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum, World of Threads (Canada), Wayne Art (PA) “Craftforms,” and “RAGS” wearable art (WA).  

Sugandha Gupta is the Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Materiality at Parsons School of Design. Born with albinism and visually impaired, Gupta creates sensory-textiles which are a collection of textiles and wearables that encourage audiences to engage through their sense of touch sound, smell, and sight.

Gupta’s research interests are at intersections of multi-sensory modes of art, design, and embodied justice. With over 18 years of experience in the textile industry and an established textile art practice, Gupta’s work is exhibited at The Guggenheim Museum, The Met Museum, UN Headquarters, Hunterdon Art Museum, The American Craft Council, and the Smithsonian Craft Show among other museums and galleries. She has won prestigious awards such as The Dorthy Waxman Textile Prize, International Design Award, and CFDA Design Graduate.