EMMA KERBER / AUGUST 2024

Emma Kerber is a textile artist and designer based in Chicago. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. Her work investigates weaving as architecture and utilizes upholstery as a means to create landscape, scene(ry) and structure.

“My studio practice is equal parts scavenging, researching, repurposing and upholstering. I am interested in objects/furniture as characters and their supportive roles to their users with an emphasis on how textile controls their narrative and function. At TWM, I want to work with buttons and objects that aren’t buttons but could become buttons. I feel so strongly about the potential of buttons. They could be integrated into a workshop for Westtown participants through floor cushions. A personalized cushion could be a tool of community and comfort used during meals, with friends around the TV, playing games, gardening, or on the chairs weaving in the W.E.F.T. program. Participants will have the freedom to make or use any buttons that speak to them.”

studio

While in residency at TWM, Emma focused on weaving and off-loom post-process techniques for finishing her sculptures and furniture.

On the loom, she began with a warp designed specifically for a bench with the inlaid imagery of Victorian tacks and screws. She experimented with her second warp, attempting a terry cloth structure augmented with hand-painted pile and heat transfer prints.

In Emma’s post-production explorations, she upholstered her weavings and off-cuts of previous weavings onto wooden frames. Buttons were incorporated through tufting with shells, distorting and disrupting the smooth, upholstered plane with rosettes, rows, and spirals of shells, evoking coastal landscapes and shell grottos.

WORKSHOPS WITH ENVISION UNLIMITED

Over the course of several weeks, Emma led a series of workshops that culminated in the completion of personalized cushions—the perfect canvas for some handmade buttons. The anatomy of a cushion was covered step-by-step in each workshop, highlighting fabric choice, form, stuffing, buttons, and decorative trim.

Participants began their design process with concept sketches, imagining what their cushions could be. Some drew inspiration from their favorite movies or pop-culture characters, food, or friends and family members. These sketches evolved into collages, followed by patterning, and before long all of the components came together.

A major highlight was “Button Day” (surprise surprise), when the magic of the button press was revealed, and the cushions began to come alive through handmade fabric-covered buttons. The participants sewed, stuffed and assembled their cushions, and in the final workshop, their craftsmanship was put to the test with an obligatory pillow fight.