Celebrate the opening of a group show organized by Wave Pool’s 2025 Curatorial Resident, Erin Adelman.

EXUBERANT RESISTANCE

With works by Colleen Merrill, Josie Love Roebuck, and River F. Berry

Textile-based art – quilting, crocheting, weaving, sewing, and more – has held a vital position in American society, often rooted in practicality and utilitarian usages. Though the hours invested in a quilt, crocheted blanket, or piece of clothing varies, most artists require ample time to sit with their work and achieve their vision. Despite the centuries-long necessity for fiber-based work, many textile artists are only being celebrated in recent decades. Because our relation to fabric is almost as old as our species’ history, we have a deeply embedded – although often unconscious – relationship with textiles. The artists in my proposed exhibition each investigate the collective and personal lineages associated with fiber art and their processes of creation. These artists relive memories of soft touches and intimate familial moments while they work, which culminates into a plush object that signifies comfort and protection. However, there is exuberant resistance within the soft curves and gentle textures of these artworks: resistance to governmental oppression, emotional detachment, and singular definitions. River Berry’s installations and fiber work kindly carve space for practicing care and processing generational trauma and mental illness. Colleen Merrill’s vibrantly textured work prod at gender roles and how women are governed, soft sculptures often snaking across a gallery’s floor or vining up a wall. Equally colorful in appearance are Josie Love Roebuck’s tapestries, which probe society’s patriarchal and racial strongholds and demonstrate the energy she has devoted to celebrating her identity rather than deprecating it.  

This three-person exhibition will demonstrate the duality of textile work, both as objects of softness for your emotions to spill upon and as objects of resistance in the face of oppressive power structures.