a creature who is aware of joy and despair and everything in between

Solo exhibition, Co-Prosperity

August 14 - September 25, 2026

In this solo show, artist Katharine Joy Houpt engages in a slow, expressive fiber arts process to create an absurdly large anthropomorphic creature and its dreams and memories, split into ten quilted panels. The work examines embodiment of subjectivity within an environment, a peek into a creature’s inner world within outer world constraints. The artist created the site-specific work for this show with the form of the building in mind, and allowed the materials including found and reused fabrics to intuitively inform who the creature has become. Katharine draws on the aesthetic tradition of Chicago Imagists, combined with fiber arts techniques including improvised quilting, free-motion quilting, appliqué, trapunto, and embroidery, to mirror the joy and the struggle of creating in a world that can hold incredible awe, humor, delight, disappointment, sadness, and rage all at once. This work is about attempting to curiously pay attention to all of it, and the imaginative impact of that awareness and unawareness on a body.