Karen Hampton (weaver)

Last updated
Karen Hampton
Born1958 (age 6465)
Education Laney College
Alma mater New College of California,
University of California, Davis
Website https://www.kdhampton.com/

Karen Hampton (born 1958) is an American textile artist, working as a weaver, surface designer, and fabric dyer. [1] She has also worked as a researcher on the history of textile production. As of 2022, she was named a Fellow of the American Craft Council. [2] Hampton lives in Los Angeles.

Contents

Education

Starting at the age of eight, Hampton learned and practiced sewing and embroidery at home. [3] After high school, she attended Laney College for one year. She would later earn a BA degree in art and anthropology from the New College of California in San Francisco. Hampton continued her education as an artist while apprenticing to master weaver and dyer Ida Grae, and later completed her MFA degree at University of California, Davis (U.C. Davis). [4]

Work

Hampton works in a combination of textile media, most prominently weaving, dyeing, embroidery, and surface design, as well as printing using archival images. Her pieces often reference American and African American history, as a response to her view that "the history of female slaves and early American textile production had been forgotten." [4] Since learning of Flora, an ancestor of Hampton's who had been freed from slavery in the late 1700s and later became a landowner, she has incorporated family history into her art, in addition to her own life experiences including voluntary busing as a child. [5]

In addition to her artwork, Hampton produces scholarly research on the history of textile production by African American women during slavery. [6]

Hampton has shown solo exhibitions at institutions including the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco.

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weaving</span> Technology for the production of textiles

Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft, woof, or filling. The method in which these threads are interwoven affects the characteristics of the cloth. Cloth is usually woven on a loom, a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. A fabric band that meets this definition of cloth can also be made using other methods, including tablet weaving, back strap loom, or other techniques that can be done without looms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiber art</span> Artworks made of fiber and other textile materials, emphasizing aesthetic value over utility

Fiber art refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as part of the works' significance, and prioritizes aesthetic value over utility.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Liebes</span> American textile designer and weaver

Dorothy Wright Liebes was an American textile designer and weaver renowned for her innovative, custom-designed modern fabrics for architects and interior designers. She was known as "the mother of modern weaving".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Lenor Larsen</span> American textile designer (1927–2020)

Jack Lenor Larsen was an American textile designer, author, collector and promoter of traditional and contemporary craftsmanship. Through his career he was noted for bringing fabric patterns and textiles to go with modernist architecture and furnishings. Some of his works are part of permanent collections at prominent museums including Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Art Institute of Chicago,Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art which has his most significant archive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonya Clark</span> American visual artist

Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Textiles of Mexico</span>

The textiles of Mexico have a long history. The making of fibers, cloth and other textile goods has existed in the country since at least 1400 BCE. Fibers used during the pre-Hispanic period included those from the yucca, palm and maguey plants as well as the use of cotton in the hot lowlands of the south. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Spanish introduced new fibers such as silk and wool as well as the European foot treadle loom. Clothing styles also changed radically. Fabric was produced exclusively in workshops or in the home until the era of Porfirio Díaz, when the mechanization of weaving was introduced, mostly by the French. Today, fabric, clothes and other textiles are both made by craftsmen and in factories. Handcrafted goods include pre-Hispanic clothing such as huipils and sarapes, which are often embroidered. Clothing, rugs and more are made with natural and naturally dyed fibers. Most handcrafts are produced by indigenous people, whose communities are concentrated in the center and south of the country in states such as Mexico State, Oaxaca and Chiapas. The textile industry remains important to the economy of Mexico although it has suffered a setback due to competition by cheaper goods produced in countries such as China, India and Vietnam.

Katherine Westphal was an American textile designer and fiber artist who helped to establish quilting as a fine art form.

Karen Hampton is an American textile designer, textile artist, and quilter. She creates works of art intended to hang on a wall, and "wearable art" including scarves and jackets. She lives in Evansville, Indiana.

Kay Sekimachi is an American fiber artist and weaver, best known for her three-dimensional woven monofilament hangings as well as her intricate baskets and bowls.

Cynthia Schira is an American textile artist and former university professor. Her work is represented in the collections of many major public museums.

Marianne Strengell was an influential Finnish-American Modernist textile designer in the twentieth century. Strengell was a professor at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1937 to 1942, and she served as department head from 1942 to 1962. She was able to translate hand-woven patterns for mechanized production, and pioneered the use of synthetic fibers.

Dorothy Caldwell is a Canadian fibre artist. Her work consists primarily of abstract textile based wall hangings that utilize techniques such as wax-resist, discharge dyeing, stitching, mark-making, and appliqué.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada</span> Japanese artist (born 1944)

Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is a Japanese textile artist, curator, art historian, scholar, professor, and author. She has received international recognition for her scholarship and expertise in the field of textile art. In 2010, she was named a "Distinguished Craft Educator - Master of Medium" by the James Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian Institution, who stated: "she is single-handedly responsible for introducing the art of Japanese shibori to this country". In 2016 she received the George Hewitt Myers Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Junco Sato Pollack is a textile artist. As a native of Japan, having lived in the United States for more than 30 years, she aims to combine Eastern and Western influences in her art and create work that has a modernist, minimal design.

Alma Lesch was an American fiber artist known for her fiber portraits. She was "the undisputed grande dame of Kentucky textile arts." A historic marker notes her achievements in Shepherdsville, Kentucky where Lesch lived and had her studio. Lesch's quilt, Bathshebas Bedspread, was included in the Objects: USA exhibit in 1969, which was organized by S.C. Johnson and Son.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consuelo Jimenez Underwood</span> Mexican-American textile artist

Consuelo Jiménez Underwood is an American fiber artist, known for her pieces that focus on immigration issues. She is an indigenous Chicana currently based in Cupertino, California. As an artist she works with textiles in attempt to unify her American roots with her Mexican Indigenous ones, along with trying to convey the same for other multicultural people.

D.Y. Begay is a Navajo textile artist born into the Tóʼtsohnii Clan and born from the Táchiiʼnii Clan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Zicafoose</span> American textile artist

Mary Zicafoose is an American textile artist, weaver, and teacher who specializes in ikat, an ancient technique in which threads are wrapped, tied and resist-dyed before weaving. Zicafoose is the author of Ikat: The Essential Handbook to Weaving Resist-Dyed Cloth (2020). Her works are part of private and public collections, including at least 16 embassies around the world as part of the U.S. Art in Embassies Program.

Nelly Homi Sethna was an Indian weaver, textile designer, researcher, writer and a crafts activist. She worked on the crossroads of Scandinavian modernism and Indian crafts tradition, which shaped her guiding philosophy. Her close association with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay played an important role in the revival and promotion of traditional Indian crafts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irene Emery</span> American art and textile historian

Irene Emery (1900–1981) was an American art historian, scholar, curator, textile anthropologist, sculptor, and modern dancer. She was known for her pioneering research in systematically describing global textiles, and was a leading authority on ancient fabrics and textiles, and for her published book The Primary Structures of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification (1966).

References

  1. Coker, Gylbert Garvin. "A Textile Artist's Historical and Anthropological Mission". International Review of African American Art Plus. Hampton University Museum. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
  2. 1 2 "American Craft Council Awards". American Craft Council. 2022. Retrieved 6 September 2022.
  3. White, Sara (2019-03-16). "Interview With Karen Hampton". Wovenful. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
  4. 1 2 Logan, Liz (March 25, 2016). "Social Fabric". American Craft Magazine. American Craft Council. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
  5. Hampton, Karen (September 2012). "Stitching Race". Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 691.
  6. Hampton, Karen (2000). "African American Women: Plantation Textile Production from 1750 to 1930". Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 770.