Kate Leibrand

Kate Leibrand creates textile-based artwork with large-scale repetitious patterning. Using mostly felt, her labor-intensive process includes cutting, painting, folding, stitching, gluing, and pinning thousands of fabric elements onto a substrate. The dense mass of fabric forms are inspired by her interest in nature and its prolific ability to grow and regenerate. Leibrand’s undulating composition calls to mind flowing fields of blossoms, moss, fungi, even shells and coral reefs. Leibrand’s working method is partially intuitive as she allows the materials, textures, and innate patterning to guide her. But as her work builds and grows the composition element by element, she purposefully contours the overall shape and embeds intimate details into sections of the form, waiting for viewers to find them. Like a vast landscape, Leibrand’s work is at first monumental and enveloping but as one visually lingers, the details emerge and the intricacies of the individual elements are revealed.