A Design Studies Master in Fine Arts Online Exhibition
About Amanda Thatch
Amanda Thatch is a textile, book, and paper artist, and is currently an MFA candidate in Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is interested in exploring art-making and language use as linked, embodied practices; her work focuses on the crossovers between words and weaving as both structure and material. Thatch has a BFA in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and learned to weave while a Core Fellow at Penland School of Craft. She later served as the studio coordinator for textiles and drawing/painting at Penland before moving to Madison in 2018.
She says of her work:
“My work explores convergences between weaving, writing, and personal experience. I invite possibilities of cloth that suggest a more expansive relationship to language. Cloth is one way to illustrate how complex interrelatedness can convey comfort rather than fear, how pliability and repair are part of survival. Weaving is one way of talking about fluid movement between opposites, and what can be created in that space.
Words are essential to how we form connections but are inadequate to enclose certain types of knowledge. My daily avalanche of textual information is often so overwhelming that it dissolves into abstraction. My studio work processes an atmosphere of words that are full of significance but impervious to access. And yet, what might emerge, change, or multiply if the automatic impulse to read is redirected to a material experience? If we could broaden and slow our attention to take in surrounding complexity along with linguistic messaging, what might we discover about our powers of recognition, imagination, and connection?
Writing is a social technology, a system that depends on shared knowledge. By combining writing and weaving, I conflate structure and syntax into haptic knowledge. Cloth is one story of resilience, of interdependence, that we can use to imagine how to be together, how to be of use.”
Related Events
- Livestream Performance I: “Long Draw (Training for Spinsterhood)“. Thatch will do live yarn spinning within the exhibition while listening to audiobooks – converging text and textiles. Friday, April 16, 2021. 1-3PM CT.
- CDMC Conversation Series: Amanda Thatch and Zoe Cohen. Thursday, April 22, 2021. 5-7PM CT.
- Livestream Performance II: “Long Draw (Training for Spinsterhood)“. Reiteration of previous performance. Friday, April 23, 2021. 1-3PM CT.
Related Links
“Tromp as Writ” is a Design Studies Master in Fine Arts Exhibition for the Spring Semester 2021. Originally intended to be installed in the Ruth Davis Design Gallery, the exhibition is supported by the Design Studies Department at the School of Human Ecology. Private installation and events occurred April 16-April 23, 2021. The exhibition is not open to the public.