Kathy Weaver’s unique explorations of science and technology, namely through robots and organic macro worlds, are singular.  Utilizing the fiber media, Weaver’s airbrushes paintings on fabric stand-alone for their originality and design.  Her unusual designs often include robots and/or cellular, organic forms.

Trained as a painter, Weaver’s early work was of a political nature. She gravitated to the medium of fabric as a way to engage a larger audience to view the message of her works.  An example of her early fiber work is a series of three quilts, “Guns Are Us” portraying handgun violence in Chicago.

Three of her works are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.  Weaver exhibits nationally and internationally.  She received the Cathy Rasmussen Emerging Artist Memorial Award at Quilt National ’07 and has an extensive exhibition history. Recently she had solo shows at the Gordon Center for Integrative Science (University of Chicago) and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. In  2010 Weaver is exhibiting at Fiberarts International (Pittsburgh, PA), Artist as QuiltMaker XIV (Oberlein, OH), Wounded in Action (New Orleans, Washington, D.C.) and other venues.  Works can be seen in two traveling shows, SAQA: Twelve Voices (Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City) and Sum of the Parts (Boone,NC).  She has received many other awards and can be seen in various books and publications.  She has been a repeated fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and the Hambidge Center for the Arts.  Her works have been exhibited throughout the United States as well as internationally.

Her work addresses technology and art.  By using the labor-intensive quilt medium, nostalgic materials, and the robot persona, her pieces have layers of meaning about time, personal and political conflict and memory. The robot represents scientific and technological progress resulting in change to the status quo.

Weaver employs the airbrush as a painting tool. The incongruity of soft painted satin for hard objects provides an element of humor to the work.  While exploring the robot in the external world, Weaver also has journeyed into organic forms, suggesting both the primordial soup of evolution and nano-level cells.

Weaver was trained at the University of Cincinnati and received her M.A. in painting and art history from Bowling Green University. She received a fellowship from the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada and studied batiking at the Narong Studios, Jogjakarta, Indonesia.  She studied at the Institute for European Studies and at the Art Academy of Vienna and has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, North Africa and South America.

ARTISTS

Artists may submit images, resume, and other material to anne@ziagallery.net.  Hard copies of images on CD, or other medium can be submitted to the address listed in the contact section. Please enclose a self addressed stamped envelope for returning any hard submissions.  Submissions that do not include a SASE will not be returned.