Katherine Earle, Clare Hu, Leila Seyedzadeh
opening Saturday, March 22nd 6-8pm
TEMPEST
1642 Weireld St., Ridgewood Queens, NY 11385
@tempest.gallery
on view: March 14, 2025 – March 29, 2025
gallery hours: Wed-Sat 1-6pm
“In our childhood we have all doubtless enjoyed the fascination of the game of Cat’s-Cradle, and experienced a sense of being hopelessly baffled, when, after completing the series of familiar
movements, we were at the end of our knowledge, and all our attempts to go on further ended in a
complete tangle of the string.”
-Caroline Furness Jayne, String Figures and How to Make Them; A Study of Cat’s Cradle in
Many Lands, first published in 1906.
Opening Saturday, March 22nd 6-8pm
TEMPEST
1642 Weirfield St., Ridgewood Queens, NY 11385
@tempest.gallery
on view: March 14, 2025 – March 29, 2025
gallery hours: Wed-Sat 1-6pm
“In our childhood we have all doubtless enjoyed the fascination of the game of Cat’s-Cradle, and experienced a sense of being hopelessly baffled, when, after completing the series of familiar movements, we were at the end of our knowledge, and all our attempts to go on further ended in a complete tangle of the string.”
-Caroline Furness Jayne, String Figures and How to Make Them; A Study of Cat’s Cradle in Many Lands, first published in 1906.
An intricate makeshift collage of 3 artist’s weavings and textile works, Cat’s Cradle is a proposal for how to dovetail in air, interlace and merge. We are, as ever, talking about Palestine, displacement, the housing crisis in America, the violent targeting of hardworking immigrants, and the indignities of the latest DEI purge, which seems hell bent on scrubbing any mention of our different identities. Then how to move forward? How can craft, mending, weaving and handmade objects be physical and psychological resistance to dehumanization?
Cat’s Cradle is a device for pattern creation; becoming through meeting, fitting and inscribing upon each other. It can be memorized and passed on. It’s a scrappy way to make a nest out of fragments or ruins.
Katherine Earle is a fiber artist and multimedia sculptor based in New York. Invested in time-based processes such as weaving, embroidery and layered dye techniques, she reorients chaos unsheathed upon us within a social order seemingly intent on disharmony. Her work has been shown in two-person and group exhibitions internationally including Copeland Gallery, Sculptors Alliance, Art Aqua Miami, Site:Brooklyn, The KUBE studios and Diagonale. She has participated in residencies in Canada and the United States, including 77Art, the ChaShaMa North Residency, and the Concordia FARR Residency. Katherine has a BFA in Fibres from Concordia University in Montreal, and is a recipient of grants from Joseph Robert Foundation and FST StudioProjects Fund.
Clare Hu (b. 1996, Norcross GA) is a weaver and artist whose practice examines personal and familial experience within the broader framework of myths and narratives that make up the American South. Variations and adaptations of Overshot weaves, a weave structure prominent in the Appalachian region, and patchwork processes described to Hu by her mother are collapsed and folded together by way of installation. Hu is currently based in Brooklyn NY. Hu has recently exhibited at Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Greenville SC), Artists Space (New York NY), Chashama Project Space (New York NY), and the Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston SC). Hu completed her BFA with a focus in Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and is a current MFA candidate at Hunter College.
Leila Seyedzadeh is an interdisciplinary Iranian artist based in New York. Her practice explores the intersection of memory, landscape, and displacement, weaving together fragments of recollection into intricate, abstract terrains. Seyedzadeh holds an MFA in Painting & Printmaking from the Yale School of Art (2019) and a BFA in Painting from Tehran’s University of Science and Culture (2014). She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant (2024), H. Lee Hirsche Prize (2019), and Soma Summer Scholarship at the Yale School of Art (2018). Her work has been featured in Canvas, ArteEast, Tique, No NIIN, Art Apart of cult(ure), Art Spiel, and the Museum of Non- Visible Art. Her current solo exhibition, “Under the Sky, Above the Sea”, is on view at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey through May 18, 2025. Previous solo exhibitions include shows at Peter Gaugy Gallery (Austria) and Dastan Gallery (Iran). She has also participated in major group exhibitions, including the Immigrant Artist Biennial, Arsenal Contemporary Art, Ford Foundation, Untitled Art Fair, and Dubai Art Fair.
At TEMPEST, we want to talk about art in a maelstrom. We invite artists to be unafraid to broach difficult conversations and address colonial structures of violence through their practice in textiles, sculpture and installation. Launched in 2024, TEMPEST Gallery is nestled on the culturally rich border of Ridgewood and Bushwick. Through our programming, we aim to create community and a space for gathering and presenting work.
