Namtenga Gateway Baobab, 2022
Handwoven Drawing with basswood, cotton, lurex, acrylic, ink and metal leaf
8" x 14"
I am obsessed with phenomena regarding our experience with beauty and the sublime. Beauty is something we take in through all our senses – it is about closely observing beauty and being open to it playing around you everywhere. Beauty is accessible in all moments. It finds an entrance as a haptic force. Beauty’s pressure plays on our skin as we move through space and manipulate objects with our eyes and hands. Beauty enters our bodies, moves our minds, and impacts us psychologically. This perspective of beauty drives my work. Mixing the artistic disciplines of drawing, painting, weaving, and interactive sculpture and installation, I am its happy participant.
Marcelyn Bennett-Carpenter is an interdisciplinary fiber artist, activist, and educator. She currently serves as the Artist-in-Residence of the Kingswood Weaving Studio at Cranbrook (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA) which is the largest hand-weaving studio in North America and is devoted to educating young artists. Bennett-Carpenter earned a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2003. Bennett-Carpenter has taught at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina and attended the Open Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Bennett-Carpenter maintains an active practice through her studio in Pontiac, Michigan, and exhibits throughout North America including Extreme Fibers: Icons and the New Edge (Muskegon Art Museum), Landscapes Real and Imagined (Site: Brooklyn, New York), and The Social Fabric (Textile Society of America, Vancouver, British Columbia). Recent work includes a commission for the Applebaum Family Foundation (Birmingham, Michigan) and a large-scale installation for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center (Detroit). Marcelyn is also co-founder of the Namtenga Soundo Babisi Studio in Burkina Faso, West Africa established in 2007. This weaving co-op is now an active, empowered, and fully independent weaving enterprise for over thirty women in a remote village on the edge of the Sahara.