Artists Indira Allegra and Josh Faught talk with Jenelle Porter, the guest curator of Kay Sekimachi: Geometries, about how Sekimachi’s work has impacted their approaches to making art with and about fiber. They will also address the history and practice of teaching and learning weaving in the Bay Area.

Indira Allegra’s work reimagines memory using weaving as a methodology to explore the repetitive crossing of forces held under tension be the material, social or emotional. Their work has been featured in exhibitions at Museum of Arts and Design, the Arts Incubator in Chicago, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Center for Craft Creativity and Design and the Museum of the African Diaspora among others. Allegra is a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 Honoree and 2019–20 Burke Prize winner.

Josh Faught combines textiles, pop cultural detritus, and archival materials to address the relationships among language, community, and constructions of identity. Solo museum exhibitions include a site-specific installation at the Neptune Society Columbarium as part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s SECA Award exhibition, as well as installations at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Seattle Art Museum. Faught is a professor in the Textiles and Graduate Fine Arts programs at the California College of the Arts.

Jenelle Porter has served as senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Among her many major exhibitions are Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design and Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay.