Debra Kayes

Places (Edition I): Bryana Bibbs is an exhibition I curated at Tiger Strikes Astroid Chicago, (link to TSA website) which included a catalog and workshop.

The works in this exhibition were made between 2022 and 2023, during Bibbs’s travels driving from Chicago to Maine and Tennessee for residencies, work, and vacation. In her ongoing “Journal Series” weavings, Bibbs intuitively documents her personal experience using materials, colors, and textures. She makes her yarn using the traditional textile techniques of hand-carding and hand-spinning before hand-weaving them on her frame loom, and she incorporates collected found objects. In the works on view, Bibbs also includes objects that have been given to her, including fungi, shells, pine needles, and more. Bibbs has been steadily building an archive of Polaroids that share evidence of her process and her travels. This exhibition is the first time she will exhibit these documentary materials alongside the weavings they index.