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Adrienna Matzeg captures the delights of a roadside diner in nostalgic stitches.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Adrienna Matzeg’s Embroideries Serve Up the Nostalgic Charm of the Greasy Spoon appeared first on Colossal. More
“The material changes, but I think of it as painting,” says Abdoulaye Konaté.
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This June, explore the innovative work of Peruvian makers in Murmur Ring’s Immersion in the Sacred Valley.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Immerse Yourself in the Creative Culture of Peru’s Sacred Valley with Murmur Ring’s Unique Program appeared first on Colossal. More
All images courtesy of Murmur Ring, shared with permission
Immerse Yourself in the Creative Culture of Peru’s Sacred Valley with Murmur Ring’s Unique Program
November 25, 2025
ArtCraftDesignPartner
Murmur Ring
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Experience design firm Murmur Ring, in partnership with Empathy and the Institute of Design, invites artists, designers, makers, and creatives of all kinds to join the Reclaiming Value: Sacred Valley Design Immersion from June 15 to 19, 2026, in Peru’s Sacred Valley. The Colossal team previously joined Murmur Ring for a transformative week-long immersion in Oaxaca, Mexico, and looks forward to joining this excursion, as well.
This is not a tourist program. Mumur Ring’s Immersions are creative exchanges born from years of research and relationship-building. Intimate site visits with Peruvian makers and innovators offer rare, behind-the-scenes access to the perspectives, techniques, and community-centered models shaping the region’s most visionary work. Participants will find new inspiration, forge collaborative relationships, and leave with ideas that will transform their practices.
In the coming weeks, Colossal will highlight several of the Peruvian makers whom participants will meet during the immersion, including Awamaki and Cerámicas Seminario.
Awamaki—named for the Quechua word meaning “made by hand”—helps women weavers of the Andes access global markets, develop business skills, and build financial independence to sustain their communities for generations. Murmur Ring’s immersion will venture into the mountains to see this social enterprise model in action and:
Meet the women weavers in their home communities
Learn how raw fibers are harvested and naturally dyed using plants, minerals, and methods perfected for centuries
Receive hands-on instruction in ancient weaving techniques, guided directly by master artists
Share a home-cooked meal prepared by the artisans
Purchase textiles directly from the cooperatives, ensuring 100% of payments go to the makers
Since it began as an individual arts practice over 30 years ago, Cerámicas Seminario has evolved into a thriving studio blending ancient artistic language with a bold, contemporary visual style. The family-run business stands not only as a celebrated center of innovation in Peruvian ceramics but also as a powerful economic engine for its surrounding community. The immersion will allow participants to:
Meet founders Pablo Seminario and Marilú Behar for a studio tour and Q&A
Learn about their path to success from early explorations in clay to their commitment to building a community-centric enterprise
See artisans at work, shaping, carving, and firing ceramic pieces
Experience a hands-on ceramics workshop, where they’ll learn ancient techniques that inspired the studio’s signature style
A place where food, land, art, and ancestral knowledge converge, MIL Centro is far more than a restaurant. It is an innovative research lab dedicated to preserving traditional Peruvian crops, restoring endangered agricultural practices, and sustaining the communities who have lived on and worked with this land for centuries. Theirs is a model that honors tradition, empowers community, and pushes the boundaries of what food, and art, can be. During a visit to MIL Centro, participants will:
Forage for native plants alongside local land stewards, learning how each species functions as food, medicine, and craft
Discover how Andean communities protect their local ecologies
Use foraged plants to hand-dye and weave natural fibers
Enjoy a multi-course meal, inspired by eight distinct Andean microclimates
Early bird reservations are available through November 30, 2025. Apply now to secure your spot at the exclusive rate, and join us for an unforgettable journey into the creative soul of the Sacred Valley.
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“We Survive You—Midéegaadi” editorial photograph featuring seven mixed media bison regalia made of repurposed materials. All work © Cannupa Hanska Luger. Photo by Brandon Soder (2023). Image courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, shared with permission
In ‘Dripping Earth,’ Cannupa Hanska Luger Ushers the Past into a Speculative Future
November 17, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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Upon entering Cannupa Hanska Luger’s new exhibition, Dripping Earth at the Joslyn Art Museum, visitors find themselves, in a sense, underwater. Frames of bull boats sail overhead, referencing the small vessels that some Plains tribes historically used and orienting us within the context of the Joslyn’s location in Omaha along the Missouri River, the museum’s art collection, and Luger’s Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota lineage.
Luger is known for his interdisciplinary explorations of his Northern Plains ancestry through clay, sculpture, performance, textiles, video, and more. For Dripping Earth, the artist took inspiration from a source with a close connection to both the Joslyn’s holdings and his own observations of art in his youth: the work of Swiss artist Karl Bodmer (1809–1893).
“Thunder as Remarkable Landscape” (2025) from the series ‘Future Ancestral Technologies,’ eight-color lithograph, edition of 7, sheet: 38 x 26 inches. Photo by Wendy McEahern, courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
Between 1832 and 1834, Bodmer accompanied German naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied on a North American expedition. Bodmer served as official documentarian, visually detailing the landscapes and people they encountered in numerous drawings and watercolors, many of which were later reproduced in Europe as lithographs. His portraits, which often emphasize ceremonial regalia, are a valuable record of Indigenous American tribal identity during this time.
Drawn to the nature of artifacts—how, for instance, Bodmer’s work can become an artifact of an artifact within the context of printmaking and reproductions—Luger considers how narratives are both conveyed and received. When Bodmer’s paintings were translated into lithographs in the 19th century, the printmakers took liberties with “correcting” some of what they viewed as mistakes or incompletions, changing anatomical anomalies or missing details. But in some cases, these corrections weren’t actually a reflection of reality, which the original watercolors reveal.
Luger is interested in how, over time, what is set into print becomes fixed, sometimes misconstrued, and inflexible. On the other hand, oral traditions like those of Northern Plains tribes are always evolving. For Dripping Earth, the artist focuses on this fluidity within the broader context of how American history is told.
“As a Native person growing up in North America, you go to school, you learn the history of the country, and you have a contrary story,” the artist said during an opening talk for Dripping Earth. His ongoing series Future Ancestral Technologies is a way of collapsing time—of bringing both the past and the future together in a way that addresses how Indigenous American material and visual culture has been shown in museums—as something ancient, primitive, and dark, when in fact it is ever-present and always evolving.
“Midéegaadi – Light” (2022) from the series ‘Future Ancestral Technologies,’ mixed-media bison regalia, installation dimensions variable. © Cannupa Hanska Luger. Photo by Brandon Soder, courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
For this show, Luger scaled up, making some of his largest work to date. A monumental figure of steel and black clay looms over a number of ceramic vessels, carved wooden objects, and multi-media installations. A socially engaged work comprising steel poles with handmade clay beads also evokes a giant, three-dimensional abacus in the shape of a buffalo, illustrating data of wild buffalo returning to the plains. A few workshops facilitated by the museum invite visitors to create their own clay beads, which are then added to the sculpture to complete the animal’s form over time.
Central to Dripping Earth are a number of dancers sporting crocheted fabrics, padded gloves, and headdresses evocative of bison. These comprise Luger’s Midéegaadi series, the title of which is derived from the Hidatsa word for buffalo. A new group of limited-run prints combine these colorful figures—complete with Ben-Day dots that nod to the act of printmaking itself—with landscapes Bodmer sketched around the Missouri River region.
Interestingly, although Bodmer made landscape paintings, too, the backgrounds of his portraits are typically left blank. Luger delves into how most 19th-century landscape painting of so-called “virgin territory” simply left out the presence of the Indigenous people who already lived there. “Oh, but we were there!” Luger says. Bodmer’s paintings are almost like the landscapes in reverse, with emphasis only on people. For a new series of Midéegaadi prints, Luger incorporates Bodmer’s landscapes into the background.
Notably, many of the landforms the Swiss artist chronicled are now submerged in the Missouri River following the construction of major dams. But Luger considers this to be a part of a bigger story, in which these land forms—created by the river—weren’t “lost” but instead reclaimed by it. Which brings us again to how we approach Luger’s show, as though moving through a timeless, watery realm representative of the past, present, and future all at once—a speculative future that brims with the past.
Karl Bodmer, “Leader of the Mandan Beróck-Óchatä,” watercolor and graphite on paper, 17 × 11 15/16 inches. Collection of the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, gift of the Enron Art Foundation. Photo © Bruce M. White (2019)
Luger’s Midéegaadi dancers have made a number of appearances throughout 2025, including a large-scale installation for Times Square’s nightly Midnight Moment public art program. The video work took over more than 90 giant LED screens in the Manhattan intersection throughout the month of April, running for three minutes starting at 11:57 p.m.
Last month, one character called “Midéegaadi – Fire” also debuted in an unsanctioned digital group exhibition called ENCODED in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing, during which the figure danced across Thomas Cole’s 1836–37 painting “View on the Catskills – Early Autumn” in an augmented reality performance.
Dripping Earth continues through March 8, 2026, in Omaha. And ENCODED runs through December 21 in New York City. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Bone as Remarkable Landscape” (2025) from the series ‘Future Ancestral Technologies,’ eight-color lithograph, edition of 7, sheet: 38 x 26 inches. Photo by Wendy McEahern, courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
“Midéegaadi – Fire” (2022) from the series ‘Future Ancestral Technologies,’ mixed media bison regalia, installation dimensions variable. Photo by Brandon Soder, courtesy of the Gochman Family Collection, New York
“Light as Remarkable Landscape” (2025) from the series ‘Future Ancestral Technologies,’ eight-color lithograph, edition of 7, sheet: 38 x 26 inches. Photo by Wendy McEahern, courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
Karl Bodmer, “Rock Formations on the Upper Missouri” (1833), watercolor and graphite on paper, 12 1/4 × 7 3/4 inches. Collection of the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, gift of the Enron Art Foundation. Photo © Bruce M. White (2019)
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“Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #2: Come On Dance With Me” (2004), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 81 x 64 inches. Photos by Dan Bradica Studio. All images © Faith Ringgold, courtesy of the Anyone Can Fly Foundation and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, shared with permission
A Retrospective of Trailblazing Artist Faith Ringgold Centers Narratives of Black Americans
November 6, 2025
ArtSocial Issues
Kate Mothes
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Across a wide range of media, from painting to textiles to works on paper, Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) developed a practice that merged history, activism, formal inquiry, and global influences. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, her work evolved from her awareness of politics and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s, which she channeled into “an incisive narrative about the historical sacrifices and achievements of Black Americans,” says Jack Shainman Gallery.
Opening this month at the gallery, a retrospective spans Ringgold’s explorations of textiles, sculpture, and works on canvas. She is renowned for her story quilts, which combine fabric and embroidery with painted tableaux of Harlem, jazz clubs, portraits—especially of women—and historical references to slavery and the oppression of Black people in America.
“American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the
Advent of Black Power” (1967), oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches
Earlier this year, a documentary called “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” was released that chronicles the artist’s first public art piece, a feminist mural at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. The mural, “For the Women’s House” contains eight segments—patchwork-like—that contain images of women in predominantly male career roles. Works like “American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the Advent of Black Power” and “Black Light #11: US America Black” mirror this motif, redolent of a quilt, which presages her later work.
At Jack Shainman Gallery, Faith Ringgold highlights the artist’s extraordinary and innovative approach to figuration, perspective, and material. She was acutely aware of the art historical canon as a predominantly white space, so she “sought out forms more suitable to the exploration of gender and racial identity that she so urgently pursued,” the gallery says. In the 1970s, she traveled to Europe and onward to Africa, gathering ideas.
When she first began working with textiles, Ringgold made what she called “tankas,” which were inspired by sacred Tibetan thangkas—textile images intended for meditation—that she saw on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Ringgold’s iterations incorporated sewn fabric borders around paintings made on unstretched canvas.
“Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #8: Don’t Wanna Love You Like I Do” (2007), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 82 x 67 inches
Eventually, these works became more abstract, then morphed into soft sculptures and performance pieces inspired by African masking traditions. As her work evolved into the 1980s, the story quilt emerged as a way to render imagery on a larger scale and connect with time-honored textile craft traditions often associated with women. Jack Shainman says:
The significance of Faith Ringgold’s life continues to be felt and understood in new, urgent and relevant ways…Just as she fought tirelessly against the prevailing sentiments of racial and gendered exclusion of both her time and our own, so too did her inimitable work in textiles provide an example of how life and art—so often presumed to be separate—are in fact deeply and fundamentally intertwined.
Faith Ringgold opens on November 14 and continues through January 24 in New York City. Explore more of the artist’s work on her estate’s website and Instagram.
“Love Letter: No Kiss” (1987), intaglio on canvas, pieced canvas, and beads, 65 x 52 inches
“Feminist Series #4: I Have to Answer For…” (1972), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 47 x 34 1/2 inches
“Black Light #11: US America Black” (1969), oil on canvas, 60 x 84 inches
“Slave Rape #4 of 16, Run” (1973, 1993), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 52 1/2 x 34 1/2 inches
“Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #5: You Put the Devil in Me” (2004), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 81 1/2 x 67 1/2 inches
“Slave Rape #1 of 16, Run” (1973, 1993), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 49 x 34 inches
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“Etched in Soil” (2025), part of ‘She Weaves White Gold’ at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. All images courtesy of Malaika Temba, shared with permission
Jacquard Weavings by Malaika Temba Explore Material, Community, and Global Trade
November 4, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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“My practice exists in the tension between rest and labor, between the intimacy of touch and the vast systems that shape our world,” says artist Malaika Temba. “Whether I am working on a small weaving or a large-scale installation, I am always asking what materials remember and who gets remembered through them.”
Merging digital and analog processes, Temba creates layered textile pieces in an exploration of migration, labor, gender, global trade, and daily life. Using a Jacquard loom, she renders tender portraits of people and quotidian urban scenes, from friends seated together to deliveries being made to the hustle and bustle of daily life in the city.
“Carry Home” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, acrylic paint, and fabric dye, 49 x 64 inches
Growing up, Temba lived in Saudi Arabia, Uganda, South Africa, Morocco, and the United States. In moving between countries, the Tanzanian-American artist tells Colossal, “I was always struck by how fabric marks culture, and how pattern, texture, and material can tell you where you are by what people wear, how they use cloth, and what materials are available to them—whether found in nature, brought through trade, or produced by industry.”
In art school, Temba learned to use a Jacquard loom, which enables weavers to create intricate patterns using an automated method. Invented in the early 19th century by Joseph Marie Jacquard, the machines originally used a punch card system. By the 1980s, electronic versions reflected advances in computing, and today, these intricate mechanisms can be programmed to create virtually any design.
“I learned to use a Jacquard loom and became fascinated by its duality: the loom as one of the oldest forms of human-coded technology and the Jacquard as a machine capable of extraordinary innovation,” Temba says. The method itself parallels the artist’s interest in material and systems. Recently, she has been interested specifically in sisal, a cultivated plant and fiber deeply entwined with labor and trade in Tanzania. Sisal is often used to make durable products like rugs, rope, bags, and more.
The artist currently has an installation titled She Weaves White Gold on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art, comprising three pieces set against ornate wallpaper. In this work, Temba employs sisal as both the primary material and the concept, as she portrays individuals and communities “carrying stories of work, migration, and endurance across geographies and through systems of production and exchange.”
“(Aunties Patterned Dresses)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric, 60.5 x 51.5 inches.
After creating the main textile element, Temba often hand-manipulates the fabric by unravelling areas, adding paint, and silkscreening. These layered elements add to a sense that the work is always in a state of flux—simultaneously constructed and undone. “Over time, these pieces have grown larger, more collaged, and richer in texture, capturing multiple moments within a single woven scene,” she says.
Temba’s work honors the lives and labor of especially people in East Africa. “With tense elections in Tanzania and the ongoing war in Sudan, I am thinking a lot about visibility, dignity, and what it means to represent ordinary people at a time when their stories are often reduced to headlines or statistics,” she says. “Creating these works is a way of slowing down that narrative, of insisting that daily life—the gestures of care, the rhythm of work, and the persistence of women—has value and deserves to be seen.”
She Weaves White Gold remains on view through autumn 2026 in Raleigh. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Beauty Salon” (2023), Jacquard woven fabric, silkscreen ink, painting, and sewing machine embroidery, 50 x 70 inches
“Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 69 x 51 3/4 inches
Detail of “Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)”
“Preparing Dinner” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 61 x 52 inches
“Veggie Market” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 57.5 x 51.75 inches
“Bismillah Auto Repair” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, chalk, and sewing thread, 60 x 46 inches
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Detail of “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters. All images courtesy of Anne von Freyburg, shared with permission
Through Lush Embellisment, Anne von Freyburg Depicts Monstrous Women Who Revel in Excess
October 21, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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In monumental installations teeming with sequins, brocades, fringe, and shiny vinyl, Anne von Freyburg stakes a bold claim about excess and freedom.
The artist (previously) is known for her “textile paintings,” large-scale tapestries that appear to drip, bleed, and cascade down the wall. Gaudy and yet rooted in elegance, the works draw on Dutch Golden Age and Rococo painting traditions, incoporating lush flowers and dramatic ornamentation.
“Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters
Von Freyburg continues to explore extravagance as it relates to traditional gender roles, romance, and saccharine expressions of love. She draws on Lauren Elkin’s recent book, Art Monsters, which posits that women who reject the role of wife and mother—and the societal expectations of beauty and kindness—are often seen as villains.
The tension between the feminine and the monstrous is evident in several of the artist’s works, including “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie),” as pop culture symbols and text bubbles mar a central figure trapped in a chaotic blur of material. Distorted by the mass of embellishments, the woman appears grotesque and uncontainable as her form bulges and falls in a deluge of pink string. Von Freyburg adds:
I approached this body of work as a declaration of the love and care necessary for all of us to thrive. It gives us permission to do the things we love doing. It’s about being free and choosing your own path to happiness in relationships. No more fairy tales about men saving women; instead, it’s about women being the heroines in their own life stories.
The vibrant pieces shown here will be on view in Amour Toujours, which runs from November 8 to December 27 at K Contemporary in Denver. Find more from the artist on Instagram.
“Something in the Air has Changed (After Fragonard, the Progress of Love: the Meeting)” (2025),textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 350 x 250 centimeters
Detail of “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters
Detail of “Something in the Air has Changed (After Fragonard, the Progress of Love: the Meeting)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 350 x 250 centimeters
Detail of “Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters
“Spellbound (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: Love letters)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 285 x 150 centimeters
“Spellbound (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: Love letters)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 285 x 150 centimeters
Detail of “Spellbound (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: Love letters)” (2025), textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 285 x 150 centimeters
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Detail of “Eternal Cowboy” (2021), ceramic, underglaze, glaze, PE braid, canvas, leather, brass. Photo by Myles Pettengill. All images courtesy of Shae Bishop, shared with permission
Shae Bishop Bucks Cowboy Traditions with Floral Ceramic Garments
October 21, 2025
ArtCraftDesign
Grace Ebert
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Ceramics and textiles share several traditions. Both media have long occupied the realm of craft, are often functional, and tend to be tied to narrative and storytelling, whether sharing in family lore or communicating something about their owner.
For Shae Bishop, combining the two offers a way to tether the enduring and universal with the intimate and personal. The Richmond-based artist has spent more than a decade creating innumerable ceramic tiles that he stitches together into bandanas, suits, and other garments. “By merging the materials and fitting them to my body, I was seeking to merge the personal with the historical, to locate myself and my individual narrative within the larger story of human culture,” he tells Colossal.
“Waistcoat of Earthly Delights” (2021), ceramic, underglaze, wool, poly satin, PE braid, wire. Photo by Loam
Bishop’s garments have evolved in complexity and embellishment during the last 14 years, as he gravitates toward art historical narratives and the self-mythologizing associated with cowboy culture. Pieces like “Waistcoat of Earthly Delights” reference Hieronymus Bosch’s famous triptych and its alternative realities. Long interested in the human-nature relationship, Bishop draws on Bosch’s biblical retelling as a way to “reimagine our fraught interactions with strange and misunderstood creatures like giant salamanders and venomous snakes,” as he adorns a vest with a pair of white serpents and vivid flowers.
A peek at Bishop’s Instagram reveals a deep reverence for snakes—there are several images of the artist with the reptiles draped around his neck and arms— and an interest in reinventing the fear and animosity associated with the creatures, which he hopes to present instead as “a hero, an icon, and an ecological ambassador.”
This intention emerges, in part, through more performative works like the turquoise, fringe-lined “Rhinestone Rattlesnakeboy Suit.” Bishop often wears the elaborate getup while stationed inside a booth and handling a snake, a performance evoking entertainment ventures like Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and the Roy Rogers Show.
The artist also frequently photographs himself out in the wild, whether knee-deep in a swampy landscape or perched atop a horse. These immersive images add another layer to the performative aspect of the project and reinforce the world-building and storytelling capacity that fashion has.
“Rhinestone Rattlesnakeboy Suit.” Photo by Jack Mauch
Of course, cowboy and Western culture are deeply entwined with American identity and masculinity, and Bishop reflects on these influences as he creates floral chaps and fringed hats. He adds:
I like the tension between utility and conservatism on one hand and idiosyncratic flamboyance on the other hand. The colorful floral outfits of country music history and the high heels and ornate leatherwork of cowboy boots are such unique expressions of culture. And I look at darker elements like toxic masculinity and a gleeful love of fossil fuels. I also put myself into this work. I try to be self-critical and interrogate my own love-hate relationship with these cowboy tropes, while still keeping a sense of humor.
“Rhinestone Rattlesnakeboy Suit” is on view through next September at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in an exhibition devoted to state fairs. This winter, Bishop will show pieces at Belger Arts in Kansas City and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and he’s currently working on a collection of ceramic diving helmets, along with leather shoes. Find more on his website.
Detail of “Waistcoat of Earthly Delights” (2021), ceramic, underglaze, wool, poly satin, PE braid, wire. Photo by Loam
Detail of “Eternal Cowboy” (2021), ceramic, underglaze, glaze, PE braid, canvas, leather, brass. Photo by Myles Pettengill
“A Swimsuit To Wear While Looking For Hellbenders” (2020), ceramic, wool, PE braid. Photo by Myles Pettengill
“Bandana” (2022), ceramic, underglaze, PE fiber. Photo by Loam
Detail of “Rhinestone Rattlesnakeboy Suit.” Photo by Jack Mauch
“Shorts To Wear While Looking For Pythons” (2019), ceramic, underglaze, glaze, PE fiber, cotton, leather, brass. Photo by Hannah Patterson
“Eternal Cowboy” (2021), ceramic, underglaze, glaze, PE braid, canvas, leather, brass. Photo by Myles Pettengill
“Shirt” (2016), porcelain, underglaze, glaze, canvas, PE fiber, 32 x 18 x 9 inches. Photo by Mercedes Jelinek
Detail of “Shirt” (2016),porcelain, underglaze, glaze, canvas, PE fiber, 32 x 18 x 9 inches. Photo by Mercedes Jelinek
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