TBD

Allyce Wood lives and works in Seattle. Through the use of digital and handmade processes, Wood makes installations, works on paper, and textiles with a focus on digital jacquard tapestries. To her, the loom acts as a mediator between traditional and computerized technologies, offering a unique way to combine online and offline experiences into images in cotton and wool.

Wood is a collector of technologies and threads. In the studio, she creates textiles on her mid-century Bergman floor loom, a passed-down marudai, and a knitting machine from the 1960s that she restored piece by piece. Every process tells a story of a different code system. Punch cards and graph paper are as vital as the bleeding watercolors she paints with. This passion for systems, for breakable rules, stems from a lifelong curiosity of reason and rule-bending.

From 2015 – 2019, Wood lived in Oslo, Norway. Here she had the opportunity to learn digital jacquard tapestry, a mechanized process based on pixel binary. Through this medium, she was able to merge her digital and physical life together into soft, familiar material. This experience led to factory-scale projects, working with fabricators and industrial machines, as well as hand-driven weaving projects in Iceland and Scandinavia.

Wood considers public engagement a vital part of her practice and is always seeking ways to share and connect. The opportunity for community involvement, information sharing, and connection drives her to pursue exhibitions, public projects, and publications into which others may enter.

Diane Lorio is a New Jersey-born artist who spent her formative years in Jacksonville, Florida. She discovered her passion for art in high school and quickly began earning commissions and awards from the State of Florida. Diane holds a BFA from Guilford College in North Carolina and has deep roots in the art world, with her early work focusing on non-representational painting. Inspired by traditional fibers, she began cutting her paintings into strips and reassembling them into intricate patterns. This innovative approach led to collaborations in “New Decorative” shows with artists like Miriam Shapiro and Tony Robin.

Over the years, Diane’s work has been shaped by her travels and life experiences. After moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan, she received a prestigious Michigan Arts Council Grant in Painting. Later, in Greensboro, North Carolina, she served as Education Director at Green Hill Center for NC Arts while continuing to create her own work. Her journey then took her to Brownsville, Texas, where she taught high school on the Mexico-US border, drawing inspiration from the rich cultural diversity of the region. Diane later relocated to Delaware, where she worked with the “Very Special Arts” program and earned a Delaware Division of Art Fellowship in Painting.

Now based in North Bethesda, Maryland, Diane continues to evolve her artistic practice. In 2023, she received a Maryland State Artist Grant for Painting. Her current work explores patterns within organic, social, spiritual, economic, and mathematical contexts. Diane’s art reflects her belief in the infinite possibilities found in the overlap of life’s designs, from the structure of DNA to the pathways shaped by personal choices.

Martie Geiger-Ho earned a Ph.D. in fine arts interdisciplinary at Texas Tech University, Texas, August 2003. Her dissertation “Pathways of Transmission: Investigating the Influence of Chinese Kiln God Worship and Mythology on Kiln God Concepts and Rituals as Observed by American Ceramists” is an ethnographic study of the worship practices associated with the ceramics industry in Jingdezhen, China. In 1994 she received her M.F.A. in ceramics and painting from Texas Tech University, an M.A. in ceramics and sculpture from the University of New Mexico in 1987, and a B.F.A. in ceramics from Arizona State University in 1984. She began her art career as an arts and crafts specialist in the United States Army (1974-77). Currently, she is working as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas since 2019. Prior to teaching at Texas A&M International University, she worked as an assistant professor of art and taught ceramics, sculpture, mixed media, painting, design, and art history at the University of Brunei Darussalam (2012-18), University of Pittsburgh at Bradford (2009-11, 2003-07), Hong Kong Baptist University (2007-09), Mississippi University for Women (2001-03), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (1998), Chinese University of Hong Kong (1998-99), City University of Hong Kong (1998), The Pottery Workshop (1997-98), Hong Kong Museum of Art (1997-98), I-Kiln Studio (1997-99), Chautauqua School of Art (1995-96), and Gustavus Adolphus College (1995-96).

Geiger-Ho co-founded Hong Kong Mural Society (HKMS) and I-Kiln Studio in 1997. She organized the first large scale raku project in Hong Kong with the grant support from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and co-directed the pilot public housing mural project and muralist-in-schools project in Hong Kong (1996-99). During her expatriate life in Hong Kong and Brunei, she participated in many local, invitational and juried exhibitions, and received several fellowships and research grants from universities and arts councils.

Geiger-Ho participated in more than 100 regional and international art exhibitions including 18 solo exhibitions. Her artworks have been exhibited in venues such as Museum of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Guangdong Museum of Art, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, The Museum of Fine Arts (Santa Fe), Kunstquartier Bethanien, Manitoba Crafts Council Gallery, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, ASEAN Culture House, Cheongiu Craft Biennale, Hong Kong Visual Arts Center, Hong Kong Arts Center, Museum of Site, University of the Philippines Visayas, Poh-Chang Academy of Arts, University of Brunei Darussalam, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, Keystone College, Mississippi University for Women, Delta State University, Gustavus Adolphus College, Texas Tech University, University of New Mexico, Cameron University, Chautauqua School of Art, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her ceramic work has been exhibited and collected in the United States, Canada, Germany, China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Brunei, Thailand, and Philippines.

Her book, The Worship of Kiln Gods: From the Temples of China to the Studios of Western Potters, was published by Outskirts Press, July 2012. Geiger-Ho has published several peer-reviewed journal articles, including “Under the influence of the “Great Mother” archetype: Photographing raw clay Bruneian landscapes through an ecofeminist lens,” The International Journal of the Image, Vol. 7,No. 4, 2016; “Teaching and making art, and cultural context: Kuwait and Brunei,” Teaching Artist Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2015; “Guardians of a shifting industry: Worshiping the kiln god, Lo Ming in Yingge,” Ceramics Technical, No. 39, 2014; “University art students undertake entrepreneurship action in Brunei Darussalam,” Teaching Artist Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2014; “Origins of kiln gods,” Ceramics Monthly, Vol. 61, No. 8, 2013; “Playing with fire and kiln gods,” Ceramics Technical, No. 24, 2007; “Guardian’s of fire and clay: The legacy of Chinese kiln gods,” The Studio Potter, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2000.

Sarah G. Sharp is an artist and curator whose interests include alternative social histories, language, place, technology and craft. She is the recipient of MacDowell Fellowship, Getty Library Research Grant, Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, BRIC Arts Media Fellowship, Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship and residency awards at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, SoHo20 Gallery Residency Lab, Brooklyn, Textile Art Center, NY and The Vermont Studio Center. Exhibitions include The Aldrich Museum and Real Art Ways in CT, Hampden Gallery at UMass Amherst, LMAK Gallery and Field Projects Gallery in NYC. Sarah’s Oral History Interview with artist Elaine Reichek was published by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute. She is the founder of The Tool Book Project, a multi-modal art project that provides a direct action platform for artists to share their work and raise funds for non-profit groups. Sarah holds an MFA in studio art and an MA Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory from Purchase College, SUNY. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and teaches in the MFA in Art Practice program at SVA in New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn and Baltimore.