A Texas transplant living on the moody East Coast of the United States, I moved to Baltimore over a decade ago for art school and never left. I was sucked in by the small town feel after arriving from the ever-expanding city of Houston. From 2006-2016, I co-directed Current Space, an artist-run gallery and studio, alongside two close friends, and I am forever grateful for the creative community that I became a part of from my time there.
My daughter was born in late 2014. Her arrival forced me to step back from everything that I was doing and take a deep breath. Although I had graduated from art school and was running an art space, I realized that I hadn't allowed much time for making my own work. I was on an unintended, silent hiatus. All of a sudden, a new life was developing before my very eyes and my perspective was changing in ways I’d never imagined.
My interest in textiles began with wanting to commemorate the life of my father. For close to fifteen years I had wanted to make something that my family could pass down for generations. I decided to make a photo quilt using cyanotype-coated fabric. The process was incredibly slow. I made negatives from scanned photos and printed my father's life on fabric using the sun. Two years later, I finished the quilt, and my obsession with fabric, natural hand-dyeing, and hand-stitching, had begun and continues to excite me.
- Monique-Nicole Olivo Crabb