Artist: Kayla Powers
Gem Quilt no. 3, 2023
Cotton, linen, silk, iron, plant dyes
20" x 16"
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kayla Powers (b. 1988) is a place-based fiber artist living and working in the North End of Detroit, Michigan.
As a self-taught artist and a trained horticulturist, Kayla Powers makes ecologically focused fiber art with and about the living world. Through the traditional practices of foraging, dyeing, weaving, and quilting, she explores the common threads of our shared humanity and what it means to be here now. The materials she works with - cotton, linen, wool, copper - come from the earth and ground her practice in time and place. The colors change with the season as she dyes fabric and yarn with plants. Her work comes from a place of intuition, curiosity, connection, reverence, and from ancestral knowledge expressed by hand.
Kayla frequently utilizes the grid in her work as a means of mapping and referencing the urban landscape. The various printing techniques in her work, including screen printing, eco printing, bundle dyeing, and rust dyeing are means of balancing the structure of the grid with the inherently organic patterns and designs of plants. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, Cedar North in Cedar, Michigan and General Motors Design Center in Warren, Michigan among others. She was the 2020 recipient of a Knight Art Grant for Local Color, her public art installation as part of Detroit Month of Design. Kayla was awarded the President’s Award for Sustainability from Cranbrook Academy of Art where she graduated with an MFA in 2023.