Reconstructing the Sense of Self

Lisa L. Kriner,  Erin R. Miller,  SK O’Brien

Reconstructing the Sense of Self:  This fiber-based exhibition explores the embodied female experience surrounding the processes of disruptive change. We use our art to explore the experiences and concepts that affect all women, our relationships with our own bodies, and how the world responds to our bodies. Through our art we redefine our sense of self through exploring our bodies’ extremes, the challenges posed when medical treatment mutilates our body, and the results when external forces cause fractures in our internal selves. As artists working with fiber, our art explores metaphors for how our lives are constructed and our materials and processes are powerful and effective communicators of embodied resiliency. Together our art engages the range of our experiences and the threads that connect them. 


Lisa L. Kriner: As a 55-year-old woman, I regularly make and acutely experience heat that is acknowledged but until recently, poorly studied by science. Sometimes to push through the uncomfortable heat, I imagine my hot flash is a super-power only middle-aged women can own. I am amazed at what my body can do and equally frustrated at the lack of information about the processes of menopause. It seems as if this very natural life experience is swept under the rug – as if an aging female body is too horrifying to contemplate. Instead of hiding this power, these woven tapestry “rugs” publicly document and celebrate my body’s metamorphosis. Trying to make sense of the experience of hot flashes through art is a way to find control in the mysterious. 

About the Artist: Lisa L. Kriner is a Professor of Studio Art and the Morris B. Belknap Chair in Fine Arts at Berea College in Kentucky. She earned her BS in Textile Technology and Design at North Carolina State University and her MFA in Fibers at The University of Kansas. Kriner’s fiber art explores evidence left by the passage of time. Through the process of weaving cloth and the use of yarn as material and metaphor, she contemplates the patterns of daily life and the construction of layers in our ever shifting public and private identities.
 
Erin R. Miller: The basis of the concepts I explore for this entire body of work are rooted in my personal experiences of objectification, how that impacts the way I navigate the world, and how I can use cloth to communicate the need for feminist social change. As I work, I have asked myself, how different would my relationship with my body be had I not been subjected to constant objectification and sexualization from a very young age? How would I have learned to navigate the world if I did not have to consider how my physical appearance and perceived gender would impact even the most mundane of daily activities outside of the safety of my home? The trauma of objectification has physiologically changed me. This work explores how external forces have intimately impacted my relationship with my own body. 

About the Artist: Erin Miller’s work explores the intimacy and fragility of the human relationship with cloth through a variety of textile, drawing, and printmaking techniques. Her work is informed by social inequity, consumer culture, and queerness. She received her MFA in Fibers from Eastern Michigan University and her BFA in Textiles from Kent State University. She is currently the Director of Weaving and Assistant Creative Director of Student Craft.

SK O’Brien: To date, much of my research has explored the limits of materiality and structure. How thin can that material be before it collapses? What form feels precarious yet still maintains its structural integrity? It was finding the beauty in these explorations that drove me.  Post bilateral mastectomy I was struck by the irony that my own material and form had been pushed too far and had failed... and now I seek to find the beauty in it.  This work explores the idea of mutated cells that change the structure and rhythm that is expected.  Increating these, I have found a way to wrap my head around the destruction that I carry with me daily and have begun to see it in a new light. 

About the Artist:  SK O'Brien is an artist and Assistant Professor in the Product Design Department at the University of Kentucky. She received a Bachelor of Industrial Design from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2008 and was awarded an MFA (2020) in Ceramics and an MA (2021) in Art + Design Education by The Rhode Island School of Design. SK’s design and fine art are united by a passionate exploration of the capabilities of materials and processes, discovering unexpected moments of function and beauty. Her art has been featured in both national and international shows. Her professional design experience includes working as Lead Designer for the Kohler Company and Products Director for 212box in New York City.  Her design work has received over a dozen patents and numerous acknowledgements including the Red Dot, iF and IDEA awards.