Workshop with Samantha Fields

Ornament has been a contested space throughout history, at times a signifier of wealth and high status and at other times a signifier of low class and bad taste. Yet we each, in our own way, have a desire to mark and make special.

During this workshop, we will explore the human impulse to ornament, here with embroidery. We will learn basic embroidery stitches and other ways to embellish cloth. This workshop will also look at the meditative and conversational spaces opened up by the practice of collective handwork. Open to all skill levels.

This workshop is offered in conjunction with the exhibition Connecting Threads / Survivor Objects, on view August 30–December 5, 2021.

Samantha Fields is drawn to the materials and processes that have historically lived outside of an “art” context. She strives to make work that can live in and speak to the worlds of both “high” and “low” culture. Fields says, “I make—slowly—with/through craft. Making slowly is a personal act of resistance against the fast-paced, multi-tasking, product-driven world in which I find myself.” As a multimedia artist, she engages with these processes as a survival mechanism, an aesthetic, and a conceptual strategy. Through these modes of making, she is able to explore different social constructs associated with the decorative, be it gender, class, or professional/hobbyist, as well as the hierarchical categories of taste and morality. Fields received an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and an undergraduate degree from Massachusetts College of Art.