About Us

Atisha Fordyce is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drawing inspiration from family traditions and Caribbean folklore, her work serves as a vessel for collective memories. Her work often portrays floating figures, symbolizing the in-between, the many places she has called home, and her yearning for a sense of belonging. This conceptual space reflects what many immigrants navigate. Fordyce is of Guyanese birth and American citizenship.

Her art is profoundly influenced by the Maroon cultures of the Americas. Through her practice, she merges landscapes and interiors to explore the concept of safe spaces, particularly in relation to resisting displacement. Her work honors leisure, featuring depictions of domestic environments, flora, found patterns, fabric, and, most importantly, people. Her art celebrates the resilience and beauty of her heritage.

Fordyce holds a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. Her work has been shown in The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, the New York Academy of Art, BSB Gallery in Trenton, and many other institutions and private collections throughout the United States and Guyana.

To learn more about Atisha Fordyce, visit https://atishafordyce.com/.

Atisha’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Maggie McKay.

Preetika Rajgariah is a queer multidisciplinary artist whose works examine the complicated intersections of cultural + queer identity, nostalgia, and capitalist consumption, while referencing her traditional upbringing as an Indian-born Texas-raised American.

Notable residencies she has attended include the Golden Foundation, the Momentary at Crystal Bridges, Oxbow School of Art, and the Vermont Studio Center. Performances at the Asia Society Texas and Untitled Art Fair Miami, installations at Women & Their Work and Art League Houston, and a large-scale public art commission at Rice University have all shaped her multimedia practice. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and currently lives and works in Houston, TX.

To learn more about Preetika Rajgariah, visit https://prajgariah.com/home.html.

Preetika’s residency was generously sponsored in honor of Sara Morgan.

Based in Los Angeles, Gbenga Komolafe is a Nigerian self-taught artist who explores the intersection of sculpture, sound, film, and site-specific installation. They draw inspiration from the traditional ritual practices looted from their Yoruba ancestors and the innovative craftsmanship of mid-20th-century queer and Black American communities. Through their introspective and research-driven practice, they continue the often-unrewarded labor of their queer and diasporic lineage to envision and actualize radical futures through both the embrace of tradition and continual experimentation.

Gbenga was a recipient of the 2021 California Art Council Emerging Artist Grant and the 2018 Fashion Scholarship Fund. Their work has been exhibited at The Broad, Felix Art Fair, Tribeca Film Festival, and most recently, as part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial.

To learn more about Gbenga Komolafe, visit https://gbenga.xyz/ART.

Gbenga’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Edward R. Allen & Chinhui Juhn.

Rebecca Padilla-Pipkin is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator based in Phoenix, Arizona. Since moving to the United States at age 10, she has lived a transient life and is influenced by the many places she has lived. Her work explores ecologies of place through a wide variety of site-specific materials and processes that index moments of interaction between the human and more-than-human. Ultimately, she strives to make work that deepens the care and attention we give to the places in which we dwell.

Padilla-Pipkin received a BFA from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA from Arizona State University. Her work has been exhibited through solo and group exhibitions, which include shows at the South Mountain Environmental Education Center, Tempe Center for the Arts, Eric Fischl Gallery, and the Institute for Desert Humanities in Arizona; at the Greater Denton Arts Council in Texas; at Mark Arts Gallery in Kansas; and at the Lightwell Gallery in Oklahoma. Her work has been generously supported through many opportunities, including the Osher Life-Long Learning Grant and the City of Tempe’s Studio Artist Residency.

To learn more about Rebecca Padilla-Pipkin’s work, visit www.rebeccapipkinfineart.com.

The artist’s work is featured in HCCC’s In Residence: 17th Edition exhibition.

Rebecca’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Brad & Leslie Bucher.

Hai-Wen Lin (they/them) is a Taiwanese-American artist whose work explores constructions of the body and its surrounding environment. Lin grew up in Elk Grove, CA, and is currently based in Chicago, IL. The artist’s kite-making practice borrows from the languages of garment construction and pattern-making as a sculptural means of understanding how to free, fly, and extend the body, placing it in conversation with the sun, wind, and sky.

Lin earned a Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023 and a BA with a double major in design and psychology from the University of California, Davis, in 2016. They are an alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and attended the Ox-Bow School of Art as a LeRoy Neiman Fellow. Lin has exhibited work at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, 3S Artspace, and the Mosesian Center for the Arts, as well as on the walls of their home, their friend’s home, on a plate, on a lake, and in many skies.

To learn more about Hai-Wen Lin’s work, visit www.haiwenlin.com.

The artist’s work is featured in HCCC’s In Residence: 17th Edition exhibition.

Hai-Wen’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Eddie & Chinhui Allen.

Nela Garzón’s art is driven by her admiration of cultural diversity. Her work encompasses topics
such as colonialism, racism, and migration, presenting a juxtaposition and hybridity of cultures as a critical outcome of the ethnocentrism of dominant societies.

Often learning traditional techniques, which she adopts and modifies, Garzón researches folk art and handcrafts from around the globe and explores the effects of acculturation. Her goal is to create awareness about the importance of ancestral cultures and to promote pride in minorities, as well as an embracement of immigrants, refugees, and a pluricultural world.

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Garzón holds a BVA from the Javeriana University. In Colombia, she exhibited at the 41 Salón Nacional de Artistas and 4to Salón de Arte Bidimensional. Her work has been shown around the U.S. and has been recognized through awards and grants, including a first-place award at the Assistance League of Houston’s Texas Show (2019), a LIFTS grant (2020), a commission by the MFAH for a temporary sculpture that was showcased in the Cullen Sculpture Garden (2022), a Jones Artist Award from the Houston
Endowment (2023), and a local residency at PAC. Her work is part of the West Collection and the Creixell Art Collection.

To learn more about Nela Garzón’s work, visit www.minkstereo.com.

Nela’s residency was generously sponsored in part by James & Molly Crownover.

Qiqing (pronounced Chi-Ching) Lin is a textile artist based in New York. She explores feminism, immigration, language, accessibility, and politics through materials and weaving. Her experience growing up and working as a journalist in China had a profound impact on her practice. Switching her medium from text to textiles, weaving has become her new language. Through spinning paper yarn and painting with threads, she looks into the complexities of family, mother-daughter relationship, class divides, and political depression.

Lin’s work takes the form of figurative tapestries, sculptural installation, writings, and social practice. She finds that being close to the material and a laboring of the body is essential: she spins her own yarn, dyes her own colors, and weaves on a hand loom. She graduated with a BA in journalism in 2014 and an MFA in textiles at Parsons School of Design in 2023.

The artist’s work is featured in HCCC’s In Residence: 17th Edition exhibition.

To learn more about Qiquing Lin’s work, visit http://qlin.otherpeoplespixels.com/home.html

Born in London, England, and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Ann Johnson graduated from Prairie View A&M University in Texas, with a BS in home economics. She later earned an MA in humanities from the University of Houston-Clear Lake and an MFA from The Academy of Art University in San Francisco, with a concentration in printmaking. As a professor at Prairie View A&M, she has received the distinguished Presidents Faculty of the Year award and repeatedly been recognized as “Art Teacher of the Year.”

An interdisciplinary artist, Johnson has a passion for exploring issues, particularly within the Black community, which has led to engaging works such as The Hoop Dreamin Collection, a series that explores the social issue of a hoop dream. Her installation, Converse: Real Talk, has been exhibited in Texas, Missouri, and New York. She’s been an artist resident at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA; at Project Row Houses in, Houston, TX; and at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND. In 2013 and 2021, she exhibited in the Texas Biennial. She has been acknowledged as an “Artist to Watch” by the International Review of African American Art and was listed as one of the 10 most transformative artists of 2022 by Black Art in America.

The artist’s work is featured in HCCC’s In Residence: 17th Edition exhibition.

To learn more about Ann Johnson’s work, visit https://www.solesisterart.com/home

Felicia Francine Dean is an assistant professor in the College of Architecture & Design’s School of Interior Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.  Her creative work explores uncovering parallel approaches to reconciling space and place through the lens of her biracial experiences in her craft and design processes. The background she draws upon is based on growing up in South Florida and living in the Southern United States.

Dean’s approach navigates her discovery of latent material identities. Her work references the medium of textiles, physically or abstractly, to uncover new material narratives through digital and hand-making methods. She uses various media, including fabric, natural fibers, wood, metal, fiberglass, and stone. Her time at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft will focus on investigating and evaluating historical, overshot weaving patterns and unveil their codes as contemporary stories.

Dean holds an MFA in interior architecture, a BA in studio art, and an upholstery diploma. Her current project, Perceptions of Misconceptions: Intersecting Stone and Fabric Material Identities, is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Windgate ITE residency; Marble Codes exhibit in Florence, Italy; and Interior Design Educators Council and Furniture Society conferences highlight some of her professional engagements.

To learn more about Felicia Francine Dean’s work, visit: https://www.feliciafrancine.com/

Born in El Paso, Texas, Juan Carlos Escobedo explores his identity as a brown, Mexican-American queer male, raised in a low-socioeconomic community along the US/Mexico border. His work addresses residual class and race shame that arises from living in a predominantly white, structured United States that favors light-skinned individuals and middle-class-and-above socioeconomic classes.

Escobedo received his BFA from New Mexico State University and MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited in San Antonio at Blue Star Contemporary, Centro de Artes, and The Southwest School of Art; in Boston at MassArt X SOWA; and in Darmstadt, Germany, at Darmstädter Sezession for The World Heritage Festival. His work has been recognized through awards and grants, including a Collective Futures Fund Grant from Tufts University Art Galleries, a consultancy at Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, an Actos de Confianza Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, a Luminaria Artist Foundation Professional Development Grant, and a residency with Casa Lü in Mexico City, Mexico.

To learn more about Juan Carlos Escobedo’s work, visit: https://www.jce-art.com/

Ian Gerson (they/them) is a trans and queer interdisciplinary artist from Houston, TX. Working at the intersections of sculpture, installation, and community engagement, their recent work investigates climate injustices, trans consciousness, and personal and collective healing. Gerson is drawn to urban waterways and coastlines as in-between, ever-shifting spaces where impacts of climate crises are forced into high visibility. Weaving flimsy tapestries with ropes and plastic culled from Galveston Bay, dried plants, mylar, and clothing scraps, Gerson uses discards and detritus as a way of centering the refused, the invisible, and the marginal.

Gerson has shared their work throughout the U.S. and Mexico at venues such as BOX13, Galveston Artist Residency, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, The Bronx Museum, and Socrates Sculpture Park. Past residencies include those at Galveston Artist Residency, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space. Their work has been supported by a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant, and a Public Art Grant from the City of Galveston. Gerson holds an MFA in sculpture and extended media from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA in studio art from UT Austin.

To learn more about Ian Gerson’s work, visit: https://iangerson-blog.tumblr.com/

Originally from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Guadalupe Hernandez examines his cultural identity by reinterpreting childhood memories and family stories that connect to his past and offer greater meaning to his present. Hernandez creates elaborate works of cut paper that require thousands of cuts using a combination of blades, woodworking chisels, and leather punches to produce complex papel picado-inspired works. As a resident at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Hernandez plans to focus on the use of traditional tools and materials to push the scale of his work.

Hernandez earned his BFA and MFA from Houston Baptist University in 2021. He participated as a Changaritto artist-in-residence with the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, TX, which culminated in the acquisition of two of his works for their permanent collection. He also participated in the True North Sculpture Project located in the Houston Heights district of Houston, TX, and as an Artist on Site with the Asia Society Texas Center, where he explored the tradition of papel picado, creating a site-specific installation. Hernandez’s works have been exhibited at the Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA; Beeville Art Museum, Beeville, TX; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; the Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX; and Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Wichita Falls, TX,  among other institutions and galleries nationwide.

To learn more about Guadalupe Hernandez’s work, visit: www.guadalupehernandezart.com

Margot Becker is an artist, weaver, and educator based in Hudson, NY. Her work explores sense of place, the natural environment, and the connection between the individual and the communal subconscious. Through tactile processes, she questions society’s understanding of sustainability, the value of labor, and the role of handcraft in late capitalism. Her weaving practice originated from a desire to understand the origins of cloth and the lives affected by it. In 2010, Margot embarked on a study to understand the process of creating textiles from start to finish. Following the belief that to know your production line, you must be your production line, this project became an all-encompassing life practice–incorporating animal husbandry, yarn spinning technologies, and fine hand weaving.

In 2009, Becker received her BA in studio art from Bard College and, in 2020, her MFA from California College of the Arts, where she was awarded the Edwin Anthony & Adelaine Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarship and the Toni A. Lowenthal Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Textiles. Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

To learn more about Margot Becker’s work, visit: https://www.margotbecker.com/

Based in her hometown of Winston-Salem, NC, Lakea Shepard is a mixed-media designer, sculptor, and milliner. Being raised by a mechanic and a textile worker birthed the artist’s passion for designing “head-sculptures,” using traditional, African textile techniques, including beading, weaving, and basketry. Her work is submerged in symbolic universal objects speaking to obstacles within Black America. The ideas for her work are developed through dreams, historical traumas, and personal life events. Each sculpture Shepard creates incorporates her visual signature, red thread, symbolizing vitality and womanhood. The red thread is also metaphorical for veins, which is her effort to bring her ideas “alive.”

Shepard studied visual arts at UNC School of the Arts and received her BFA in crafts with a focus in fibers at the College for Creative Studies in 2013. She also attended the New York Studio Residency in Dumbo, in New York City. Her work has been shown in many galleries, including the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, NC.

To learn more about Lakea Shepard’s work, visit http://www.lakeashepard.com/.

Born in Delhi, India, Shradha Kochhar is a textile artist and knitwear designer based in Brooklyn, New York. Best known for her home-spun and hand-knitted cotton sculptures, her work combines themes of material memory, sustainability, and intergenerational healing. Focusing on generating a physical archive of personal and collective South Asian narratives linked to women’s work, invisible labor, and grief, her work is large scale and sculptural.

Kochhar incorporates resources lost and born from colonization in India into her work, including khadi, a self-reliant and equitable practice of textile making, and kala, a miracle cotton crop that sustains completely on seasonal rainfall. She sees both of these as a part of the solution to climate change, water shortage, soil degradation, and social inequity.

Kochhar received her MFA in textiles from Parsons School of Design, New York. She is a Dorothy Waxman Textile Excellence Prize Finalist and was awarded the John L. Tishman Environment and Design Award for Excellence in 2021. Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Vogue, Crafts, Harper’s Bazaar and other publications.

To learn more about Shradha Kochhar’s work, visit www.instagram.com/shradhakochhar/.

Kelly Dzioba is a Connecticut-based artist who explores textiles as a form of process art. In her current body of work, she weaves party beads to create recursive objects informed by the visual languages of textile tradition, geometric abstraction, minimalism, and kitsch handicraft. By bringing camp and visual decadence to formalism, her work explores themes of taste, consumption, and the hierarchy of value in art and craft. As a resident artist at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, she aims to expand the scale of her work and incorporate new ways of embracing sustainability in her practice.

Dzioba received her BFA in craft and material studies from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She is the recipient of the Peters Valley School of Craft Artist Fellowship, the Lenore Tawney Scholarship, and the William F. Daley Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad at The Textile Center in Minneapolis, MN; The Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY; High Tide Project Space in Philadelphia, PA; and the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum in Seoul, South Korea.

To learn more about Kelly Dzioba’s work, visit: http://kellydzioba.com/

Originally from Washington, D.C., Carl Johnson works in the medium of fiber arts, with a specialty in weaving. He has always had a love for math and logistics and constantly finds himself counting and calculating in his head. Johnson received his BFA in Fibers in 2021 from The Savannah College of Art and Design and is a recipient of the 2021 Windgate Lamar Fellowship. Recently, he has shown his work in shows such as Art Fields, Moving Fiber Show, and Shades of Grey and was featured in Not Real Art’s Q+Art. He believes that he is meant to create and follow his own path as an artist, as he continues to find tangible solutions to the ideas in his mind. Learn more about Johnson’s work at https://www.carljohnsonstudio.com/home.

Carl’s residency is generously underwritten by Molly and Jim Crownover.

A working artist for 20 years, Velliquette has participated in over 150 exhibitions in museums and galleries in the US, Europe, and Asia. His work is in the permanent collections of the Chazen Museum of Art; the San Antonio Museum of Art; the Art Museum of South Texas; the Racine Art Museum; and The Microsoft Collection. He has participated in numerous residencies and cultural exchange programs, including the Artpace International Artist-in-Residence; the John Michael Kohler Art/Industry program; and EUARCA, Kassel, Germany. Velliquette is a member of the Paper Artist Collective—a global community of artists and designers dedicated to the medium of paper. His work is represented by the David Shelton Gallery in Houston. He is currently a faculty associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. To learn more, visit https://www.velliquette.com/.

The sculpture of Stephanie Robison plays with multiple oppositional relationships. Working with industrial fabrics and wood, she creates large-scale installations that examine relationships between culture, nature, and the built environment. Her latest series of work combines traditional stone carving and the process of needle felting wool. By merging incongruous materials such as wool and marble, she works to synthesize and fuse: organic and geometric, natural and architectural, handmade and the uniform industrial. Focusing on materiality and color with this new work, Robison creates charming, often humorous or awkward forms referencing aspects of the body, relationships, and the environment. While in residence at HCCC, Robison plans to expand her current body of work by gaining material knowledge through further exploration into needle felting and stone carving.

Originally from Oregon, Robison currently resides in California, where she teaches sculpture at the City College of San Francisco and serves as educational director for the California Sculptors Symposium. Robison holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Marylhurst University and a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Oregon. Her work has been exhibited at Whatcom Museum and Tacoma Art Museum in Washington; Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in California; Peter Robertson Gallery in Alberta, Canada; Yeiser Art Center in Kentucky; and Site:Brooklyn Gallery in New York. To learn more, visit http://www.stephanierobison.com/.