Harmony Hammond

Harmony Hammond included in Queer Threads, curated by John Chaich at Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts.

Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) presents Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community/, featuring 26 artists from four continents who remix fiber and textile craft traditions and materials to explore contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer identities and ideas. Loaded with gender connotations, feminist herstories and tactile experiences, the featured works utilize handicraft—including crochet, embroidery, knitting, macramé, quilting and sewing—as a platform for examining tastes, roles and relationships socialized within and around gay and lesbian culture, as well as the bodies, cultures and spaces that shape us.

With works that date from as early as 1955 to as recent as 2016, this international, intergenerational mix of artists position the evolution of personal desires and public identities within the history of domestic crafts and fiber arts. Many of the works are fully executed using traditional fiber craft techniques while others deconstruct traditional craft processes and repurpose found materials and craft supplies.

While several high profile fiber exhibitions nationwide have included fiber art by LGBTQ artists, Queer Threads’ 2014 debut at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City—the first art museum in the world with a mission to exhibit and preserve LGBTQ art, and foster the artists who create it—marked the first exhibition expressly examining contemporary queer fiber art practice.

Queer Threads includes work by Chris Bogia (New York), Melanie Braverman (Massachusetts), Jai Andrew Carrillo (California), Chiachio & Giannone (Argentina), Liz Collins (New York), Ben Cuevas (California), Pierre Fouché (South Africa), James Gobel (California), Sabrina Gschwandtner (California), Harmony Hammond (New Mexico), Jesse Harrod (Virginia), Larry Krone (New York), Rebecca Levi (New York), Aubrey Longley-Cook (Georgia), Aaron McIntosh (Maryland), Allyson Mitchell (Canada), John Thomas Paradiso (Maryland), Sheila Pepe (New York), Maria E. Piñeres (California), Allen Porter (deceased), L. J. Roberts (New York), Athi-Patra Ruga (South Africa), Sonny Schneider (Denmark), Buzz Slutzky (New York), Nathan Vincent (New York) and Jessica Whitbread (Canada).