April DeConick: Flow Meets Fiber

• Saturday, Jul 8, 2023  3pm - 5pm Opening Reception
• Mon, Jul 3, 2023 - Sat, Jul 29, 2023  9pm - 5pm

Sawyer Yards is pleased to present Flow Meets Fiber, a solo exhibition of textile works by artist April DeConick. The exhibition occupies the Bay 300 Gallery at the Silos at Sawyer Yards, and is open to the public 9-5pm, Monday through Saturday, from July 3-29. The artist will also be present at public reception from 3-5pm on July 8. 

Flow Meets Fiber is an exhibition about remediation.  It provides a space for us to enter, reflect, and remember the Flow, our connection to nature and each other. Modernity – the author of technology, consumerism, and urbanization – has an underbelly which has left many of us overly stressed, depressed, and anxious, living lives detached from our ancestors and in conflict with our neighbors.  Many of us live in a state of distraction and self-destruction, unable to be present in the moment as we constantly respond to the devices we carry in our pockets or wear on our wrists.  The Flow is the wu-wei of Daoism, the “not doing” of the steady stream that effortlessly runs its course and connects us to each other.  Each tapestry took shape out of my own flow, developed intuitively and spontaneously from start to finish.  Each artwork embodies the Flow, reminding us to unplug, be present with each other, and go with the flow.

About the Artist:

April DeConick is an award-winning textile artist and professor of the study of religion at Rice University.  After decades of writing about mysticism and gnosticism, she has found that words often are inadequate to communicate the deepest aspects of reality.  She has turned to art to communicate what cannot be said in words, what must be experienced and felt first-hand about who we are, where we are from, and where we are going.  She first learned to stitch rugs and weave in college, but since then has developed her own artistic practice. She combines hooked, tufted, felted, embroidered, stitched, and painted fabric surfaces into vibrant undulating textiles which she suspends from waves of ceramic. She has participated in exhibitions put on by the Art League of Houston (Texas), Sawyers Yards (Texas), Envision Arts (Texas), and Celebration of Hand-Hooked Rugs (Ohio). In 2018, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame for hooked art.  She operates an art studio in the Silos at Sawyer Yards, Houston.