Artists Residency

Kendall Ross is a contemporary textile artist based in Oklahoma City, known for her hand-knit, text-based works that explore themes of identity, memory, and gender. Raised in a family of women makers, the artist draws on generational craft traditions and lived experience to create intimate, narrative-driven fiber art.

Ross holds a BA in History from Pepperdine University, where she researched the political power of knitting in women’s wartime movements. This historical lens continues to shape her practice, blending inherited techniques with conceptual rigor in garments and installations that are both personal and political.

Ross has exhibited nationally, with solo shows at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum and Kouri + Corrao in Santa Fe. She has completed residencies at the Banff Centre and Penland School of Craft, and was an accompanying artist for the Coded Objects project at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. Her work has been featured in Hi-Fructose, Colossal, Fiber Art Now, and Glamour. As a teaching artist at Oklahoma Contemporary, Ross fosters accessible, expressive spaces for fiber arts, challenging the boundaries between craft and fine art. She is represented by Kouri + Corrao, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

To learn more about Kendall Ross, visit https://idknitthatco.com/

Kendall’s residency is generously sponsored in part by Bob and Sue Schwartz.

Candace Hicks is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work explores narrative, coincidence, and the act of reading through artist’s books and immersive installations. Growing up on a ranch in Texas, storytelling and drawing played an early and formative role in the artist’s creative development.

Hicks’ background in book arts and training as a printmaker (MFA, Texas Christian University) has led her to cultivate a distinctive practice that blurs the boundaries between literature and visual art. A lifelong reader, she collects coincidences from the books she consumes—shared words, themes, and plot elements—and transforms them into conceptual art experiences. Her ongoing artist’s book series, Common Threads, investigates the synchronicity of fictional worlds and is held in over 90 collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harvard University. One volume is permanently displayed at the New York Public Library in the Polonsky Collection of Treasures.

Hicks’ installations extend her book work into three-dimensional, participatory environments, which have been exhibited at venues such as Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX), Art Living Arts (Tulsa, OK), Women & Their Work (Austin, TX), and Blue Star Contemporary (San Antonio, TX).

A committed educator, Hicks has taught design since 2012 and been recognized with the Stephen F. Austin Foundation Award for Research and multiple research grants.

She has also taught workshops in book arts and embroidery to international audiences, notably at the Center for Book Arts in New York, and has recently completed a Fulbright U.S. Scholar project in Amiens, France.

To learn more about Candace Hicks, visit http://www.candacehicks.com/

Candace’s residency is generously sponsored in part by Cyvia G. Wolff.

Katie Mongoven/秋莲 is a Chinese American fiber artist from Washington, DC, based in Detroit, Michigan. Using thread, hair, beads, and found ceramics, she examines the themes of identity, ornamentalism, and bodily autonomy as they interact within the Asian American diaspora, viewed through the lens of an orphan and adoptee from China’s one-child-policy era.

Mongoven received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art, along with the Surface Design Association’s Outstanding Student Award. She was a Roman J. Witt Visiting Artist at the University of Michigan, a Windgate University Fellow at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, and the Barstow Artist-in-Residence at Central Michigan University. Other residencies she attended include the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Michigan, with a forthcoming residency at Stove Works. Solo and group exhibitions include the University of Michigan, Playground Detroit, and Riffe Gallery and ROY G BIV Gallery in Ohio.

To learn more about Katie Mongoven, visit katiemongoven.com.

Katie’s residency is generously sponsored in part by Scott & Judy Nyquist and Jerome Schultz.