Abstract Textile Art on Display at UA Gallery

Heather Whidden's "In the Being from Within"
Heather Whidden’s “In the Being from Within”

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The artwork of Heather Whidden, a University of Alabama Master of Fine Arts student, will be displayed from Friday, April 1 to Friday, April 29 at the UA Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center in downtown Tuscaloosa.

The exhibit, titled “(Re)Pair, uses weathered fabric, stitches, nails and other materials to tell stories of pain and healing. The public is invited, free of charge, to attend the exhibition and the reception, which will be held opening night from 5 to 8 p.m. in the gallery.

Whidden, a Pensacola, Florida, native, graduated from the University of West Florida with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting in 2012. During her candidacy for the MFA program at UA, she taught and assisted classes in 3D design, sculpture, ceramics and painting. In February 2016, Whidden presented her paper, “Interpreting the Stitch,” at the Associated Colleges of the South and Southwestern University Gender Studies Conference in Georgetown, Texas.

“My work explores moments, events, relationships, and how experiences shape identity,” Whidden said. “For this exhibit, I saturated fabric in pigment, pulled it apart, stitched it together and subjected it to natural weathering in order to simulate events of the past, present and the space between these moments.”

Heather Whidden's "Unseen Forces"
Heather Whidden’s “Unseen Forces”

This is not Whidden’s first time exhibiting at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center. In 2015, she presented “always here to your there,” a look at the accumulation of emotion, experience and memory through paint on canvas, with her husband Josh Whidden.

The University of Alabama Gallery offers a year-round schedule of exhibitions of artistic works, artifacts and textiles and other media from permanent collections held by UA as well as works by faculty, students and guest artists and designers.

The gallery is at 620 Greensboro Ave. in downtown Tuscaloosa and is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and until 8 p.m. on the first Fridays of the month. For more information, phone the gallery at 205/345-3038 or 205/342-2060.

The gallery is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes and Goldwater scholarships.

Contact

Courtney Corbridge, communications specialist, College of Arts and Sciences, 205/348-8539, courtney.a.corbridge@ua.edu

Source

Heather Whidden, hljernigan@crimson.ua.edu