Woven artworks by Amanda Curreri…
by admin
As a part of this issue of our What’s on Your Loom series, we feature the woven artworks by Amanda Curreri, all of which are woven on the TC2 loom! These artworks were also a part of the solo exhibition by Curreri, titled In Bocca al Lupo, at Romer Young Gallery in San Francisco, California. The exhibition continues Curreri’s ongoing inquiry into the intersections of material studies, visual culture, and collective futurity. In the text below, Curreri tells us more…
Die Draumen Drücken (2025)
Woven with: Natural fibers / Linen; Dimensions: 41 x 44 inches
This one is named after a German idiom that translates from German to English: “I’ll press my thumbs for you” – much like the English “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.” I’ve been tossing around the question of “how do you say good luck?” over the past year or so and a few folks offered this one up. I wove this on a TC2 loom using T-shirt cotton which adds unusual texture and body to the surface and body of the cloth. The image is of two people pressing thumbs for good luck with a grid pattern and woven with various twill weave structures.
Talisman Tower (2025)
Woven with: Natural fibers, glass beads, thread, and fabric dyes; Dimensions: Approximately 108 x 42″ (double sided)
Talisman Tower was made in conjunction with a recent research residency at Stanford University. I was invited to host a workshop and asked participants to collaborate on the design of the banner. First we created informal talismans for one another as a way towards creating this collective textile-talisman. ???? The participants were invited to join me in thinking about social and anti-social technologies. Each figure in the weaving is that of one of the participants and represents their response to the prompt to contribute to a social-support architecture.
The banner is woven by hand on a digital TC2 Jacquard loom and embellished with beads and fabric dyes to add regenerative symbolic elements of collective sorrow (beaded tears/rain) and daily renewal (sunset/dusk). After the workshop. participants were invited to hands-on demo sessions on the TC2 loom and now have the option to pursue their own research in the digital textile lab at Stanford. My heart is full with gratitude for this collaborative exchange centered around the social technology of the loom!
Talisman Tower was made with support from UNM @unm_art @unmfinearts @unmartslab & in partnership with Stanford Arts Institute @stanfordarts and with the collaboration of a stellar group of workshop participants: Quinn Dombrowski, Müge Gedik, Alex He Zhai, Crystal Huiyi Peng, Ruiyan Wang, Nick Harvey, Sarah Jade Yao, Athena Kolli @_atheeena_ , Nicole Chavez @nicolechavz , Shuhan Liu, Fiona Wang, Paul Gontaard, Sandi Khine, Bhu Kongtaveelert, Jessi Pipert, Heidi Lubin.
Insertion (2025)
Woven with: Natural fibers / Linen; Dimensions: 32 x 40 inches
The image in this weaving is translated from an archival photograph of a fragment of Sicilian lace. I built the weaving draft with a supplemental weft overshot structure to force the image to hold more than the original source photo (furry merino wool for texture, bright contrasts for color that feel like an intense Sicilian sunset, and long supplemental wefts for material presence). Insertion is a word used in textile studies and conservation and refers to decorative bands that would be applied to augment other fabrics.
Public Figures (2025)
Woven with: Metallic and cotton yarn; Dimensions: 26 x 14 inches
Public Figures is woven by hand on a TC2 digital loom with metallic gold yarn. In person, the surface shimmers and interferes with our ability to see the image.This is woven from a photoshop file I created almost like one would “print a file” but it is handwoven line by line after assigning weave structures to the different tones/values in the image. I collaged a singular face out of many different “public figures” facial features to combine into one collective mask of sorts. These are all individuals that hold inspiration for me for the themes in the show. So much of our media-saturated culture is about looking and being looked at so I wanted to try to make a face that can look, regard even, but that avoids or being known completely. The black flat shape functions to introduce the idea of a mask and also refuses to identify the individuals separate from the collective. The original images are separated into 11 different tones, or shades, in the computer and assigned a range of shading satin weaving structures; the mask shape and the ground are woven in broken twill and a basketweave.
Stutter (2025)
Woven with: Natural fibers / Linen; Dimensions: 25 x 19 inches
Stutter is woven on the TC2 loom from a Photoshop drawing with twill and supplemental weft weaving structures. This is actually only a small section of the original design – after I took the cloth off the loom and started to make it into a painting I found that the very center of the originally 42” wide piece was the most exciting part of the composition. The title refers to the process I experimented with on loom where I wove part of my file/design and then restarted the file again and again rather than simply weaving in full exactly what I had designed in advance. So I stuttered the design and also the word ‘stutter’ relates to language and attempts at making meaning and communicating with one another. Repeats, re-steps, trying again, and again, often failing but making unexpected patterns like a dance. Formally, this one transitioned from a more representational design to one that is now more abstract in its final form which is surprising and exciting for me.
Gambatte, Toi Toi Toi (2024)
Woven with: Natural fibers / Linen; Dimensions: 28 x 20 x 21 inches
This one is inspired by the kind of exterior wraparound signage on the second or third story of buildings in restaurant districts in downtown Tokyo or Seoul. Except it is wooley and hand-woven. One panel translates to “Do your best” from Japanese – which was likely my most used phrase when I lived there in the early 2000s. And the other panel is an onomatopoeia for three spits on the ground used in theater before someone goes on stage. A Greek friend shared that she learned this from her mom, and I also hear that folks from Eastern Europe also use this idiom.
Mucha Mierda (2023)
Woven with: Poly, cotton, and paper yarns handwoven on digital Jacquard loom; handwoven and indigo dyed cotton, recycled denim, acrylic paint, dye remover, beads, silk thread, and felted naturally dyed wool; Dimensions: 40 x 30 inches
Mucha Mierda is a Spanish language idiom for good luck. I’m excited about the complexity that I’ve achieved with this one by treating my woven cloth as collage material. There are tempo changes that I’ve been working towards here that have been a looong time coming. And language shares space with image and with formal moves, hand gestures, the digital imprint of photographs, and hand weaving. The repetition of the grid, softening and turning and tuning of it, working sort of like a bruise-y, blue-y, pop song mantra.
In Bocca al Lupo (2023)
Woven with: Various recycled yarns handwoven on a digital loom, hand dyed and handwoven and indigo cotton, synthetic dye, glass beads, silk and metallic embroidery thread; Dimensions: 42 x 31 inches
In Bocca al Lupo – the title of the show – translates to “go into the mouth of the wolf!” in Italian. This one embeds the formal moves/composition with material and linguistic meaning. The middle blue and white section is hand-dyed and woven denim twill made to understand better the materiality and ubiquity of the vernacular American fabric. I’ve found a way to have hand-painting and digital gestures, like Mucha Mierda also. Things are furry and textured and shift character. The painted elements are loose and free and direct while the digital elements are heavily mediated. I’m liking this tension.
About…
Amanda Curreri holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts, a BFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a BA from Tufts University in Sociology and Peace & Justice Studies. She is a faculty member in the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico. In 2025 she will be an Artist in Residence at Os Icelandic Textile Center’s Digital Weaving Lab. Curreri’s artwork has been recently commissioned by Facebook Open Arts, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Her work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California (Queer California), Cincinnati Art Museum (Women Breaking Boundaries), Contemporary Arts Center (Archive as Action), Asian Art Museum and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Ortega y Gasset Projects (New York City), and the Incheon Women’s Biennale, Korea. Curreri’s artwork has been featured in the New York Times, Artforum, VICE, Hyperallergic, Frieze Art, KQED Arts, San Francisco Chronicle, and more.
Links…
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