Ellen M. Blalock, Big Old Bad Rover, 2021, 55.75” x 47”, quilt, woven and non-woven fabrics
Mosaic Narratives
September 11 - October 24, 2026
Ellen M. Blalock, Tina Williams Brewer, Isis Davis Marks, Beverly Y. Smith
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 11, 5:00-7:00 PM Free
Rooted in one of America’s oldest and most enduring art traditions, Mosaic Narratives brings quilting, textiles, and fiber-based practices into the gallery through an exhibition centering Black women artists and their vital contributions to the evolution of these forms.
For generations, Black women have used fabric and stitch to hold memory, preserve family and cultural histories, and pass knowledge from one generation to the next. Mosaic Narratives celebrates that legacy while highlighting the ways Black women artists continue to shape, reinterpret, and expand these traditions today.
Ellen M. Blalock draws from the oral histories of her family and community, seeing herself as a conduit for stories that deserve to be heard and represented. Through her work, she preserves memory, amplifies lived experience, and gives visual form to histories carried across generations.
Blalock’s work has been exhibited at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Everson Museum of Art, and other institutions, and she has received fellowships and residencies from Light Work, SUNY Oswego, and the Schweinfurth Art Center.
Tina Williams Brewer creates story quilts rooted in family, ancestry, memory, and the African American experience. Drawing on personal history and the stories passed through generations, she layers fabric, symbolism, color, and pattern to explore heritage, spirituality, migration, and cultural identity. Family is central to both her life and artistic practice, providing an important thread through the histories she preserves and reimagines in cloth.
Williams Brewer was born in Huntington, West Virginia, and lives in Pittsburgh, PA. Selected exhibitions include the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, OH; and the U.S. Embassy in Ghana. Her work has also been presented through U.S. Department of State exhibitions in Ghana, Sudan, and Bangladesh. Honors include the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for the Arts and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship.
Isis Davis-Marks has worked with fabric since childhood, when her great aunt taught her how to dye cloth, crochet, knit, and sew. Davis-Marks knows that the association of cloth with domesticity and femininity often causes textile work to be disregarded or undervalued in fine art and academic spaces. She disrupts this narrative by drawing on textile traditions and techniques to craft intricate narratives about personal histories that connect to broader political contexts.
Davis-Marks was born in the Bronx, NY, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Selected exhibitions include La Loma Projects, Los Angeles, CA; EIK Gallery, New Haven, CT; Mad Eye Gallery, New York, NY; and Toshkova Fine Art Gallery, Charlotte, NC. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Art Oasis, and The Nation, among others.
Beverly Y. Smith constructs collage-like quilts using fabrics patterned through a range of surface-design processes, including machine stitching, hand embroidery, paint, transferred images, found objects, and graphite drawings. The figures in her work are drawn from live models and photographs of people of personal importance and women she admires. Her textiles function as visual codes through which she processes memory, reclaims the past, and envisions alternative futures.
Smith was born and lives in Charlotte, NC. Her work has been exhibited at The Smithsonian, Washington, DC; The Museum of American Folk Art, Santa Fe, NM; Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC; Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, UK; August Wilson Cultural Center, Pittsburgh, PA; and Art Basel, Miami, FL, among other venues. Her work has also been reviewed and profiled in Textile Art Magazine, Quilting Magazine, and Culture Magazine, among other publications.