Aliana Grace Bailey

Artist Statement

I am an interdisciplinary fiber artist—taking up space with bold softness. My work embraces artmaking as a vehicle for growth, building intimacy, and creating inner peace through weaving vibrant colors, narratives, and the creation of environments. Through my art, I explore and manifest awareness of self, Black womanhood, and everything sacred to me.

My work is bold, warm, quiet, soft, private, and full of details that intimately engage the patient viewer. My work preserves stories—the legacy of those I love. It invites the viewer to consider their relationships, how they choose to love themselves, and how they choose to love the people closest to their hearts. This invitation is initiated by sharing my vulnerability, openness, and self-healing practices. My work is large in scale, emotional, and vibrant in color to encompass the body and provide viewers with a hugging comfort while exploring familial connections, memories, and experiences that tug on our hearts.

Fiber entered my practice in 2012 in honor of my grandmother, Ruby. During my final years with her, our relationship grew close. We became like best friends. We shared many intimate moments of care and patience. Each day, my grandmother spent time repetitively admiring a print from across the room. Following my grandmother’s passing, I was called to reconnect to my creative freedom of mixing mediums and my interest in textiles as a child. Not until after her passing did I pay closer attention to the print she was admiring, Faith Ringgold’s 1988 Church Picnic Story Quilt.

My weavings and locs are living works, adapting and transforming from space to space—taking on new forms in response to their surroundings. This evolution manifests most prominently in Soft Gather, a series of healing spaces where Black women and gender-expansive people are invited to rest and nurture relationships through the vibrant language of color therapy and fiber. I focus on deepening personal connections to love, spirituality, and healing. While intimacy is not something to force, it can be intentionally explored, better understood, practiced, celebrated, and strengthened between individuals, ancestral lines, and communities. Through fiber, I weave layers of interconnection, comfort, and storytelling. My artwork juxtaposes beauty and a sense of optimism against traumatic realities—creating spaces where joy and healing can coexist with acknowledgment of historical and ongoing struggles at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. In this tension, my work finds its transformative power, offering both sanctuary and a catalyst for change.

Biography

Aliana Grace Bailey is an interdisciplinary fiber artist, designer, and care worker. She was born and raised in Washington DC, and lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a passionate advocate for radical self-love, wellness, healing, and grief support. 

Aliana is a proud alumna of NC A&T State University, where she double-majored, earning a Bachelor of Social Work and a Bachelor of Art in Visual Arts Media Design. She has worked as a socially-engaged teaching artist since 2017, after completing the Art for Social Impact fellowship at The Sanctuaries. In 2020, she earned her MFA in Community Arts and a Certificate in the College Teaching of Art from Maryland Institute College of Art. Aliana is a 2023 Rubys Grantee, 2025 Grit Fund Project Grant Recipient, and 2025 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Finalist. She has completed art residencies in Ghana, Maryland, DC, Virginia, MASS MoCA in Massachusetts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, and an apprenticeship at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.

Follow Aliana on Instagram! @jalianagrace

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Michael Booker

Artist Statement

Through fineliner pen drawings, Mississippi-born Maryland-based artist Michael A. Booker explores Black interiority and personhood. Deploying his usual lexicon of aesthetics to create complex images that oscillate between the figurative and abstract, the artist delves into the intricate interplay between psychological and emotional experiences and their ties to the Black community and culture. Frequently, heads in Booker’s work are either hidden or turned aside, emphasizing the role of hair as the primary mode of expression rather than facial cues. This pose suggests that the figures may be concealing their emotions or engrossed in something beyond our immediate awareness. Vivid hues, subtle symbolism, and meticulously crafted details serve as channels for conveying inner reflections and their intersections with broader cultural contexts. They also convey how individuals perceive their place within or outside the collective cultural framework. Through the portrayal of the figure, viewers are presented with a chance to introspect and contemplate their own personal experiences.

Bio

Michael Booker is a mixed media artist originally from Jackson, Mississippi that currently resides in Maryland. He received his BFA in Studio Art – Painting from Mississippi State University in 2008, and received his MFA in Studio Art from University of Maryland in 2012. He has exhibited in various galleries across Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. His work has been acquired by the David C. Driskell Center in College Park, MD and the University of Texas at Austin. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Art at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Springs. He is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington DC.

Follow Michael on Instagram! @mabooker_art

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Katherine Knight

Artist Statement 

I make autobiographical mixed media collages that range from intimately scaled sketchbooks to immersive 3D installations, and wall sized pieces with figures up to one third larger than life. I combine the fine art painting and figurative techniques I learned in my formal arts education with skills I picked up working in theater, and also those I learned at home from the many crafters, stitchers, and knitters who have mentored me since I was a child. My work combines the fleeting and bittersweet beauty of daily life with the anger and anxiety I feel as a 21^st century human and parent.

In my studio, I am motivated by the materiality of artmaking; especially that moment when something mundane manages to be both familiar and transporting. My favorite experience as an art viewer is being moved viscerally by a piece from across the room, only to discover, upon closer examination, that the artist has alchemically transformed something conventional into something extraordinary through their wit and skill. In my studio, this manifests in a playful approach to the materials I use; a practice that also helps me stay engaged when dealing with weightier subjects. 

In my more recent work, I try to disguise the transitions between my ‘high art’ and ‘craft’ techniques, a sleight of hand that results in a visual puzzle for viewers to solve. Knitted textiles morph seamlessly into trompe l’oeil paper and paint. A soupy wash of color turns out to be hand embroidered lace. A seemingly photographic element is alive with color and brush strokes upon closer inspection. I delight in methods that are unapologetically hand-made, while maintaining links to historical conventions of figurative painting and pictorial space. It is a slow, labor-intensive process. There are many false starts and do-overs, but evidence of my time and my hand in every detail communicates the care I feel for the subjects and experiences I depict. 

This practice is also an attempt to place all of the techniques I deploy on equal footing; a small but satisfying act of rebellion against those voices in my past that implied a hierarchy, and considered my interest in domestic arts a problematic distraction from my pursuit of serious painting. I am actively working to break down some of the unnecessary barriers I’ve built between these practices, and celebrate all of my creative interests and abilities.

Bio

Katherine Knight grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. She received a BA in Studio Art from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and an MFA in Painting from American University in Washington, DC. She has completed additional studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Her work has been exhibited at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, VisArts in Rockville, MD, the OU Gallery on Vancouver Island Canada, Gallaudet University in Washington DC, Shrine NYC’s virtual Group Show (room 5), and the Indie Grits Film Festival, where her short film Sunday Mornings won the Southern Lens Award. International artist residencies include the OU Gallery on Vancouver Island, Canada, and the Burren College of Art in County Clare, Ireland. She is associate professor of painting at Montgomery College in Silver Spring, Maryland, and splits her time between Washington, DC and rural Appalachia.

Follow Katherine on Instagram! @kmknight2

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