Register by 5:00PM on Thursday, October 29 to receive the Zoom login information via email.

Queer Threads is an evolving curatorial project organized by John Chaich that spotlights contemporary LGBTQ artists who are remixing fiber and textile traditions. Since 2014, the group exhibition has traveled from New York, Baltimore, Boston, and San Jose, accompanied by a full color coffee table book designed by Todd Oldham Studio. In conjunction with Queer Threads, Curious Spaces—a multi-venue suite of exhibitions in DC this fall—American University Fine Art Department presents a series of lectures by past, present, proto, and future Queer Threads artists: Paolo Arao, Angela Hennessy, Oliver Herring, T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, and Sheila Pepe. A queering of mediums, each of their practices uniquely merges fiber-based crafts with painting, sculpture, and installation. These lectures will provide a glimpse into studio practices that defy formal expectations and question the function of identity in the making and circulating of art works. Co-hosted by the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.

In fall 2020, a multi-venue suite of solo exhibitions, Queer Threads, Curious Spaces will be organized in Washington, DC at Transformer and The Corner at Whitman-Walker.

Sheila Pepe received a BA from Albertus Magnus College in 1981, a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1983 and a MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University in 1995. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1994 and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 1984. Pepe has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad in solo and group exhibitions as well as collaborative projects, most recently in Fiber: Sculpture 1960–Present, ICA/Boston, MA, and 
We have never participated: 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, China. She has received numerous awards including an
Art Matters Grant, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Grant, and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Her work is held in public collections including the Harvard University Art Museums, Rose Art Museum, and The Smith College Museum of Art.

Image: Sheila Pepe, Your Granny’s Not Square, 2008. Shoelaces, yarn, and hanging hardware, 84 x 144 x 42 in. Collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum.