2024
108” x 144”
Installation with paint, sculpted paper pulp letters, casted ceramic pepto bismol bottles
48” x 36”
2024
Flowers cut and collaged from secondhand vintage bedsheets and curtains. Appliquéd onto a repurposed velvet curtain.
2024'
18” x 24”
beet juice anthotype
2023
Each 24” x 18 1/2”
Plant-dyed secondhand fabric (black walnuts, fustic wood, logwood, and iron) raw edge appliqué, embroidered second hand yarn.
Inspired by a boarded up window in an Baltimore city alley and to the ones we love and lose who leave permanent impressions on us.
2024
44” x 67”
Vintage acrylic yarn
2023
Ad hoc fresh and dried flower installation at Druid Hill Park
The expectations placed on mothers is higher than any other role in society. We turn to the mother as the all knowing and doing person in our life and expect nothing more than her full presence and help at all times.
Can mom’s ever say or do the right thing? What makes a good mom?
“Bad is temporary, moms are forever” - Amelia Hazen
Huge thanks to Elisa Lane, Amelia Hazen, and Jantzen Nolan for the help on this project.
2023
45” x 50”
Plantdyed secondhand bedsheets cut and collaged
2022
Sub Rosa: La Casa de Beatriz Cabrera is a multimedia room installation representing a conversation taking place between the artist and her mamá, exposing family lineage, the role of caretaker, and motherhood.
Visitors enter through curtains lined with roses on the two long sides of the room. At the two short ends of the bed are the only solid walls, each of which displays a wall-size quilted mask. Through the eye openings of each mask, visitors see video footage of my mother’s eyes and my eyes searching, evoking in the viewer the feeling of entering someone else’s dream.
Pixelated Rose Garden, 2021-2022 (center) Quilt made of secondhand synthetic and plant-dyed fabric, cotton thread and batting, bed
Mamá, 2022 (right wall) HD Digital 5 min. video loop, secondhand plant-dyed fabric, cotton thread and batting
Hija, 2022 (left wall) HD Digital 5 min. video loop, secondhand plant-dyed fabric, cotton thread and batting
The size of a queen
2021
How Can They Sleep At Night is a line taken from pop punk band, NOFX’s cover song Perfect Government. One of the many influential bands of my youth. The culture of punk rock had a huge impact on my value system and understanding of capitalism, racism, homophobia, and sexism.
Punk music and the culture around it was about the message.
2021
Plant-dyed fabrics
20” x 17”
Maple wood white wash floater frame
Collection of Sophie Reverdy
2022
Plant & mineral dyed secondhand fabric (logwood, fustic wood, iron, weld), thread, batting
23” x 23”
Collection of Rebecca Grace
Did you ever die for a millisecond? Did you ever eat a weed gummy after an intense weekend that involved spreading your dad's ashes in the gulf of Mexico, after carrying them around from house to house over the span of 15 years, even losing them at one point, then finally spreading them with one of your 4 brothers and mom, who was wearing a leopard print bathing suit, in an inflatable raft into the warm waters of Galveston, not far from the shoreline because it was harder to paddle out than imagined, and the ashes ended up in your mom's face including her mouth, and your brother tells her she deserved it. The next day you visit your other brother at his halfway house and take him to Mcdonald’s for lunch where you watch him devour a big mac with all the sauces running down his face and hands while five TV monitors are airing a zombie show with people being eaten and blood spraying everywhere. Meanwhile, a Mcdonald's employee whose a dwarf is waxing the floor, and you know that their height shouldn't matter but it does because you grew up in the 90s watching Twin Peaks. Afterward, you drop your brother back off at the desolate halfway house where, thankfully there was one big tree in the yard because it’s hot as hell because it's Houston and the heat is fucking oppressive but at least that tree is there to provide shade while you trim your brother's fingernails because your mom asked you to because he's too mentally far gone to care so you do it with sweat streaming down your face and it kind of makes you gag because his fingers are cigarette stained and gross and still have Mcdonald's sauces on them, and for a moment you share a sliver of your childhood, then you say goodbye knowing you may never see him again but he tells you he'll see you at a party because he may actually see you at a party because he lives in another dimension because they say he has Bipolar Schizoaffective Disorder. You drive away in your first car rental while visiting Houston because you want to be in control and you think you've made it out free from falling apart but then you end your visit by eating a weed gummy with a childhood friend but the gummy was part of a larger mass of melted gummies so you don't actually know how much THC is in it but you eat it anyways and well..... the THC really settles in there after an hour and you begin to not feel right and then you begin to feel like you may actually die from a panic attack and you beg your childhood friend and her husband to take you to the emergency room. Meanwhile, you're thinking about how you're a grown ass adult with a child back at home in Baltimore and you just can't die for the sake of her future. Your friends don't take you to the emergency room because they convince you it is not a hospital any human would want to be in, so you stay put, then you beg your friend to find the Pixar movie Finding Dory because you remember another friend saying it made him feel safe to watch animated movies and you remember Finding Dory was a sweet movie but you're so high that you begin to think you are Dory looking for the family you lost and you really begin to unravel all parts of yourself, and you realize that actually you are not in control and that your body is and it is on its period and it wants to vomit and it wants to cry and it wants to snot and it wants you to shit yourself and wants you to feel like you have wads of cotton in your mouth and it seems like your friend is having a very different trip than you, even though she ate from the same big mass of melted gummies. As you are writhing around on your friend’s kitchen floor, which is made out of cement, your friend stands over you, and asks,
“How does it feel? How does it feel to fall apart?
You’re not a rock, you know.”
Then she convinces you that you need to go outside, that there is a special meteor shower happening, but the moment your back hits the grass and you look up at the expanse of the sky your heart stops and you shoot into outer space faster than you've ever imagined something could go and you almost, as instantly, come back into your body, and throw up. Your childhood friend, who you've been to hell and back with over and over again, scoops you up into her lap and begins cradling you like a baby, and tells you to let go, to just let it all go.
So you finally do
and you just bawl and bawl like you were just born.
September 11 – October 2, 2021
Two-person exhibition at Current Space with local artist and filmmaker Meg Rorrison
Working in a variety of mediums, both artists are concerned with personal histories, the mapping of experience onto surfaces, and the stains of memories through dyes and light. This exhibition focuses on stories cultivated to make sense of complex societal structures and the illusions, sadness, and beauty in the hidden subterranean landscape.
Interactive performance and installation, collaborative music playlist, plant-dyed secondhand fabric, thread, loose cotton, used bed linens, red velvet curtains, dried marigolds, Mexican candy, NY Times Newspaper, indigo dye, shellac, fishing line.
Spring of 2020, I invited friends, family, and strangers to share their saddest song with me to be added to a playlist. I listened to it while working on various projects that involved collective grief. The performance for Hypogean involved playing the collaborative playlist while gallery visitors were invited to hit the paper-mache tear drop shaped piñata I constructed out of indigo dyed NY Times newspaper from 2020 filled with dried marigolds and Mexican candy. Everyone was offered the treasure of marigold seeds and candy after the eruption of the piñata.
Current’s storefront window I installed How Do They Sleep At Night. The windows were lined with velvet curtains to signify theatrics and behind the curtains are tufted pillow cases and bedsheets up against the wall that read How Can They Sleep At Night, a phrase taken from pop punk band NOFX’s cover of Perfect Government.
Other textile works displayed in the gallery were from my series
Soft Body.
2021-2022
Quilt / Machine-pieced with secondhand synthetic and plant dyed fabrics, thread, batting
119” x 80”
After a fight on the night of my parents' honeymoon, my dad said to my mom, "Honey, I didn't promise you a rose garden."
I made this rose garden for her.
2022
Plant-dyed textile stretched in a float frame with mahogany wood and a distressed gold leaf face.
24” x 21”
Inspired by the Bandy Bandy snake's defense mechanism of looping its body to detract predators.
2019
37 x 42”
The bookends to Soft Body series. Dyed with avocado pits, onion skins, black walnuts, tannin, logwood, and iron.
The hexagon in nature is found as an efficient packing shape that bees use, most snowflakes under a microscope take on the hexagonal shape, Carbon has the molecular structure of a hexagon. Everything begins with Carbon, it is the key ingredient for most life on earth. We are made of several billions of them in our body. The element is even in our DNA and makes up the body from head to toe.
Featured on the HBO series We Own This City
Inward collection of Ania F.
2019
81 x 71”
An intuitive monster. All colors achieved by extracting color from various plants, minerals, bugs, and food waste and adhered to different textures of second hand fabric.
Machine pieced and hand appliquéd shapes.
Collection of Mend
2023
74” x 59”
Two panel assemblage of secondhand plant dyed fabrics and vintage napkins
2018 - 2019
66 x 66”
Plant-dyed secondhand fabric, hand appliqué and hand quilted
A personal story quilt made with all plant dyed second hand fabric about my brother who suffered from Bipolar Schizoaffective Disorder for over twenty years. I worked on this piece for over a year before he passed away. It’s a story of a person whose seasons in life revolved around jails, hospitals, mental institutions, and half way homes. The evolution of this piece is documented through #johnpaulcabreracrabb on instagram with written stories that correlate to selected symbols that honor my brother’s life.
2020
Denim, bedsheet ends, cotton napkins, avocado pits, twine, and avocado pit dye, hooks.
Chthonic Duty speaks to the subterranean, deep-rooted domestic duty of women that society continually shapes and expects .
2019
46” x 59”
Plant-dyed secondhand fabric. Cochineal, madder root, fustic wood, thread, batting
An ode to mother earth. A deep connection through the monthly rising heat in my own body. I feel her calling for us to change our behavior, like a mother calls out to her child.
Collection of Jonna McKone.
2020
39 x 39”
Vintage cotton napkin / laser engraved text
OVER AND OVER speaks to the undervalued labor of care and domestic work that must be done over and over again. The color of the engraved laser text mimicking the rust stained folded creases reference the history of domesticity while the circular configuration addresses the continuation of this devalued form of labor.
2020
48” x 69”
Plant-dyed secondhand bed sheets, thread, used 2x4 studs
A soft and unstable monument to the unavoidable nature of loss and turmoil.
Tornados are unpredictable and random. They can decimate one house while leaving the neighboring house totally intact. They evoke feelings of destruction and fear due to the power of their massive and natural spinning force. I chose to use the basic shape of a tornado to symbolically represent the emotional state of grief. Grief is undeniably a part of the human experience, it can occur in so many ways and different times in one’s life, prompting an unexpected sense of isolation even though we know it’s part of being alive. We offer condolences, yet the words do not feel strong enough to sustain our weight through the uprooting, flinging, and dropping that the tornado of grief spirals you in and out of.
2015
60 x 60”
Cyanotype coated cotton fabric, thread, batting
In honor of my dad
Donald L. Crabb
1934 - 2002
A man who married three times, loved storms, his children, and the beach.
Designed in a chronological format like a newspaper spread but with the written story blank yet implied with the hand quilted thread.
Photographed by Joseph Hyde
2019
Soft Body is a collection of textile works made from second hand fabric and dyed with colors extracted from plants and food waste. Each piece is an exploration of stripping the quilt form of its function while manipulating shapes and color to reflect on the various aspects of occupying a human body. An abstract representation of energy in its varied forms of travel through heat, tears, sound, and light as it temporarily grounds us to earth.
2021
Organic indigo dyed second hand jeans, thread, dried marigolds
2021
60” x 158”
Second hand fabric, discarded house paint, thread, curtain rods
Inspired by author Chuck Palahniuk's book Fight Club whose main character struggles with his identity within a constrained capitalistic system. Modern Scroll envelops the ancient format and first editable record keeping text while playing along our modern format of scrolling.
For twenty four days in a row I posted one completed quilt top block with a painted letter on instagram. During that three week period Instagram followers interacted with my postings by guessing what was being spelled. The final statement was revealed on June 27, 2021.
2020
secondhand vintage cotton napkins / black walnuts / twine
Plant dyeing process documentation.
I forage for plants locally as well as collect food waste over many seasons. Plants I don’t grow or forage for I purchase from Botanical Colors in Seattle Washington — A female operated small business that works with sustainable farmers around the world.
I use secondhand fabrics that I scour and prepare for marrying plant dyes to.
2019
60 x 60”
Organic indigo dyed khadi cotton, thread
A gradation of time through the hues of indigo that represent the dark depth of depression.
2019
36 x 48”
Dyed with cutch, fustic wood, logwood, and iron.
Machine pieced / Hand quilted.
The human body can generate mechanical vibrations at very low frequencies, scientists call them infrasonic waves. The vibrations are produced by the physiological processes of heartbeats, respiratory movements, the brain, blood flow in vessels and so on. The emotional state of a body effects the vibrations emitted.
Collection of Andy Cook
2020
31 x 31”
Domino Sugar flocked cotton vintage napkins
My dad, who was born during the Great Depression, often said this to me growing up--so much so that it is ingrained in my psyche and I think of it often and affects the way I view food as well as our food industry being allowed to put sugar in all packaged goods.
I presented this piece in a way that would allow the viewer to play with the phrasing along with the historical connotations of sugar, cotton, and the use of cloth napkins.
2020
Second-hand crochet table topper / avocado pits / twine
Dyed with avocado pits
2020
Vintage dress, shoes, screen printed handmade notebook paper
Many years ago my mom confessed to me that I once came home from Pre-k with a note stapled to my dress that read,
“𝘞𝘦 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥.”
Even though I don’t remember this, I do remember the weight, solitude, and overwhelming feeling of being misunderstood as a child. I mixed English and Spanish until I was about six years old, often only feeling understood by my family.
Over the years my mom has become the person I feel has a hard time understanding my words. As I adapted to American culture and drifted away from her. We’ve become the closest strangers.
2019
43 x 43”
Plant-dyed secondhand bedsheets with fustic wood + organic indigo, thread, and batting.
According to scientific research there are three different types of tears humans produce— Basal, Reflex, and Emotional, and each have their own special combination of enzymes. The combination that make up emotional tears are helpful for regulating the body and bringing it back to a homeostatic level.
This piece represents the abstract and wishful notion that if we all cried at once it would balance out all the hurt of our home, both to our bodies and to earth.
Collection of the Gerrus Family
2018 - 2019
Plant-dyed and mineral modified second hand fabric, thread, batting
Using the traditional courthouse steps pattern I wanted to create a piece that used all my plant dyed second hand fabric but particularly ones saddened with iron, which gives it that overall earthy tone. The eye is a two way window that takes in but also looks out. I imagine the 9 eyes representing a family/community of eyes looking out for each other.
During the summer of 2020 I raffled this quilt on Instagram, raising $5,000 that was distributed to various organizations that support Black Lives Matter.
2017
62 x 62”
Plant-dyed secondhand fabric .
Constructed entirely of naturally dyed cottons. Plant dyed black with a 3 step process repeated twice to create a deep black on flannel. The buttercream color was made from tannin, and the rainbow colors made organic indigo, logwood, fustic wood, madder root, cutch and iron.
2020
32 x 42”
Secondhand synthetic red fabric alongside cochineal+madder root dyed second hand fabric. Handmade Pom poms with secondhand yarn.
Inspired by artist Beth Hoeckel’s collage, Someone Else.
By recreating the blanket in Beth’s collage I imagined crossing generations of artist’s intentions. From the original knitter of the blanket, to it being used in the photo shoot for the magazine that then Beth cut out of and used in a new context for her collage.
By bringing the blanket back into the real and tangible world and suspending it in a similar fashion from the photograph, the motley pattern is highlighted which invokes the jester.
A free floating joke.
2018
72 x 66”
Secondhand plant-dyed fabric, hand-quilted using natural toned quilting thread, batting.
The pattern and colors created for this piece ignite my memory of flights from Houston to Mexico City as a child and the way the buildings from above looked like someone had scattered colorful candy across the city.
The Odyssey Years is a collection of photographs of the people, places, and things I encountered and shared space while wandering through my youth.
