Vanessa Filley

  • "Vanessa Filley describes a recent body of work as 'imagined cosmic map(s),' charts that connect the traditions of fiber arts with the present and the artists own questions of finding one's place in the world. Titled In the Delicate Meshes, the series is comprised of sewn pieces that Filley lies to quilts, with stitches layers into symmetric patchworks of color, and texture, 'I am interested in the energetic threads that orient and connect us, found us in place and time, yet tether us to our ancestral past and future - the lines that bring us home,' she says.
     
    Filley references artists like Lenore Tawney, Hilma af Klint and the women of Gees Bend Quilters, whose practices accent to spirituality, nature and ancestral histories. Taut threads and twists embody tension and connection between both ends of a stitch, the intricate structures of the works as a whole, and the long tradition of fiber arts. 'Each piece in this series is a quilted conversation, a way of taking the disparate questions of feelings of a given moment and mingling them with inspiration from the outside world and the work of those came before,' the artist says."
    - Ebert, Grace. "Artist Vanessa Filley Stitches Meditative Cosmic Maps Brimming with Geometry and Symmetries", April, 2023, Colossal.
  • Exhibitions
  • Vanessa Filley was born in New York City in 1975.  She received her BA from Oberlin College and spent her early career investigating human rights violations in prisons and jails.  Instead of following her intention to go to law school, she founded a clothing company of one of a kind wear made from recycled fabrics. Her practice quickly evolved through the honing of her craft into mixed-media fine arts. Her work ranges from large scale sculptural installations to tiny embroidery pieces to poems and photographs.  Her photographic work allows her to designs scenes, make costumes and conjure a certain sense of emotion and place. She is inspired by how history and memory shapes who we are in the present. In June of 2018 she completed a two month residency at the Frances Willard House Museum. She has been showing work, and has won a number of juror’s awards, throughout the US and internationally since 2015. In 2016 she was one of Photolucida’s Top 200. In 2018 she was one of Photolucida’s Top 50. She lives and works in Evanston, Illinois.
  • Works
    • Vanessa Filley, Merge + Divide, 2022
      Vanessa Filley
      Merge + Divide, 2022
      Watercolor and pencil on thread-sewn paper
      44 x 56.5 inches