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Justin Bruursema

"The event of a thread." — Anni Albers, On Weaving, 1965

Albers spent a lifetime arguing that a single thread is never just a thread. It is an event, a small decision with consequences far past where it sits in the cloth.

This exhibition features the artwork of Cohort 19 from the Master of Fine Arts program at Azusa Pacific University. These artists have spent the last several years in shared studios, crit rooms, and late deadlines, each pursuing a separate body of work while building, almost without meaning to, a body of relationship. Interwoven is the record of that process as much as it is a show.

It is also a collection of thought and feeling joining together in an unpredictable pattern. Threads cross at odd angles. Fibers vary in weight, in color, in origin. Yet collectively they form a fabric of strength and complexity, one that covers us, protects us, and moves with us as we live and breathe. It tells us who we are without asking us to explain ourselves.

The fragmentation in our society can be felt everywhere. Dissonance seems more real than the headlines of the day. Conversations splinter before they finish. Distance grows even between people standing in the same room. Against this, the need for connection and relationship feels less like a sentiment and more like a survival instinct. Interwoven speaks to harmony within the diversely different, and to strength found inside what looks, at first glance, like isolation.

The works gathered here move across photography, painting, fiber, video, clay, and paper, each material carrying its own memory and resistance. Light bends around a figure's hands. A face dissolves into language not its own. A nest holds its shape against snow. A wing, stitched in copper and thread, waits to be worn or simply witnessed. Each piece stands on its own. None of them needed permission to exist beside the others.

We represent a diversity of media, message, age, and ethnicity. A detailed examination exposes irregularities between us; stepping back to see the entire view reveals how multiplicity becomes beauty. Difference does not weaken our message. It is the message. Within the fabric of solidarity, we find strength enough to keep weaving.

Donna Kemper

Kayla Stanz

Sofiia Sveshnikova

Kelly Harwell

Kayla Stanz

Naomi Hall

MRW

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