With textiles, embroidery, whittling, ceramics, collage, photography and 3D printing, HomeEc references the domestic realm in concept and craft. The participating artists hail from Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and New York and contribute a variety of unique considerations of home, domesticity, privacy, tradition, belonging and displacement.

Ceramicist Summer Carmack evokes the tradition of afternoon tea, while Nick DeFord gently rebels against traditional notions of the home front in embroidery and image. Joe Ford's 3D printed cul-de-sac addresses privacy and surveillance. Paul Loughney's collages of floating millwork and destabilized architectural detail face Cara Sullivan's photographs of burnt interiors. Jenna Richards presents ghostly ceramic shells of folded garments - memorials to time and care - while Rowan Haug's paper quilt top floats on ambient air flow suggesting clothes drying on the line. A second work by Sullivan documents a performance in which she mimics the catnap and the charming collection of hand whittled spoons by Marty Haug deliver both a variety and unity of form.

Jenna Richards is a ceramic and fiber artist. Recently, Richards began combining the two mediums through a technique called “slip dipping.”

Fibrous material is dipped into clay suspended in water, known as slip. Once the slip is dry, the piece is fired, burning out all fiber. This leaves a ceramic version of the original fiber article, creating the illusion of fossilized clothing.

“Through the study of archaeology I learned that textile remains can be found preserved through impressions left on fired clay,” Richards explains. “There is an incidental process of preservation in archaeology that I am carrying out in a very purposeful manner.”

Richards is a graduate of the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville, and recipient of the Bill Fischer Senior Grant project for 3D Art. She is a member of LAFTA (Louisville Area Fiber & Textile Artists) and exhibited in the LAFTA group exhibition at the Carnegie Center of Art and History. Most recently, she exhibited in Beneath the Covers, a book-themed art show at the Foundry Art Center in St. Louis. In addition to her artwork, Richards created a line of hand-spun, wool yarn called My Old Kentucky Home Spun.