Vibrating between image and object, my studio practice centers on material manipulation and studying values ascribed to textiles. Fascinated with hybridity and the brain’s reward system, I marry repetition and overstimulation by rerendering and reconstructing cloth. I transform photo montages into fiber assemblages by dissecting their forms and material cultures. Hyper-femininity and contemporary craft discourse inform my manipulation of self-fashioned and inherited textiles as I pair traditional surface design techniques, including dyeing and screen printing, with digitally manipulated imagery. Through the collection, documentation, reproduction, and distortion of images and objects from my hand-me-down archive, I elevate the domestic from personal to public.

Madison Nelson is an MFA candidate in the Fiber and Material Studies department at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Nelson was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and received her BFA with a concentration in sculpture from Texas State University. She is the founder of the Sculpture Association at Texas State. Nelson worked as a curator and set designer for several bands in central Texas. She has a permanent installation and murals in Snappaheads bar in San Marcos, Texas. She has exhibited at Blue Star in San Antonio, Texas State University in San Marcos, SAIC Galleries, and Mana Contemporary in Chicago. Nelson is the recipient of The Grace/Walter Smith grant and SAIC grant, and in 2020, was nominated for outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture at the International Sculpture Center. She has lectured in the SAIC Fiber and Material Studies department, discussing her research on thing theory and the semiotics and values ascribed to objects, textiles, styles, and craft discourses. She has publications in Not Real Art, The San Marcos Daily Record, Olas Literary Magazine, and online in SAIC Graduate Exhibitions 2024 and Fiber and Material Studies Graduate Students.