Where a knot begins and ends exhibition artists, Teresita Carson Valdez, Molly Roth Scranton, Malika Jackson, and Kara Cobb Johnson, explore the ways that material exploration inspires and drives their practice across various media, and the ways in which they intersect and diverge and inform each other through tactility. With an emphasis on techniques derived from ceramics, weaving, and the feminine mystique, the artists will also speak to the complexity of craft practices that have evolved within the contemporary context. With the hand ever present in the work, the artists question how objecthood and abstraction informs the interpretation and transformation of the work from its raw to final state. The conversation will be moderated by Christine Tarkowski, Professor in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This discussion is in conjunction with our New Edition Professional Pathways program, which is offered exclusively for alums of Center Program, one of the Art Center’s capstone development programs for working artists. New Edition challenges a group of ten artists to build on their practice by adding new mediums to their toolbox by enrolling in a course at the Art Center to create new works, and through participation in weekly seminars.

About the Artists:

Teresita Carson

Teresita Carson is a Mexican, Chicago-based artist and award-winning filmmaker working across disciplines, including moving image, new media, and installation. Taking an irreverent approach to world and counter-archive building, she explores the abstract intersections between the historical, the speculative, indigenous cosmogonies, and magical peripheries. Her experimental films have screened internationally, including at the Slamdance Film Festival and the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego. Most recently, her work was included in the Cleve Carney Museum’s Emerging Artist exhibition and was chosen for the 2024 Ground Floor Biennial. Carson has received grants from DCASE’s Individual Artists Program (IAP) and the Artists Run Chicago Fund. She is currently collaborating on a film project with the Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts community as part of her residency with CPS Lives.

Molly Roth Scranton

Molly Roth Scranton lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Her studio practice uses household objects, language, and quotidian aesthetics to create “thing-poems”: sculptures, ceramics, weavings, paintings, installations, and time-based works in video and sound that mimic the objects of everyday life. Her interests lie in collaboration, beauty, longing, escapism, labor, and anxiety. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, MN, the Finnish Academy of Fine Art in Helsinki, Finland, Babelkunst in Trondheim, Norway, Harvestworks in New York, and the Hyde Park Art Center, Elastic Arts, Free Range, Roman Susan, and 6018 North in Chicago.

Malika Jackson

Chicago-based artist and educator, Malika Jackson presents emotional narrative works in painting, drawing and sculpture inspired by her lived experience as well as texts by writers like Langston Hughes and Sonia Sanchez. Jackson is an alumna of the Art Center’s Center Program (class of 2013) and has been making her artwork between the Oakman Clinton Studios at the Art Center and her apartment studio in South Shore for over 20 years.

Her works have been exhibited in galleries, festivals, in group and solo shows. Jackson had a solo exhibition Whispers of a World Without Words at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2022, and an exhibition with Sapphire and Crystals at Bridgeport Art Gallery, and the Addington Gallery. She has also received commissions for the Ronald McDonald Houses’ – the Ryder Cup Tournament; as well as exhibiting at the Howard Brown Center, Black Clay at Chicago State, Fast Forward, Rewind: Play, HPAC,‘From the Earth-Woman Made Gallery, Gallery D’Estees, Noyes Gallery,

Museum of Science and Industry, Artopolis at the Merchandise Mart, Cliff Dwellers, and numerous other venues.Awards include honorable mention, Museum, of Science & Industry, Black Creativity; honored by the Diasporal Rhythms Art Association; art grant from the city of Chicago, design awards-Ann Brooks and Fur International Awards. Commissions for public artwork through the City of Chicago. Curator for Women’s Made Gallery and curator and coordinated ‘Cultural Connections African Art Bazaar for 25 years. Featured in ‘Curators of Dixon’; ‘Producing Local Color’ – Art Network in Ethnic Chicago’, by Diane Grams; ‘South Shore Current’. Jackson has taught in the Chicago Public Schools, Charter School, Community Organizations and at the Hyde Park Art Center. She received an MFA & BFA from the School of the Art Institute, and studied at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, and participated in an artist tour of France and Italy, where she completed a ceramic workshop in Tuscany.

Kara Cobb Johnson

Kara Cobb Johnson (born 1976) is a visual artist based in Pilsen, Chicago. Cobb Johnson trained as a sculptor, video, and public artist in Minneapolis, MN, and graduated from Northeastern Illinois University in 2000. Her work investigates form, materials, and space while offering immersive installations that present an empowered female hand. She has curated independently as part of her practice and received a Visual Arts Certificate from the University of Chicago, Graham School of Continuing Studies in 2016. Cobb Johnson has been awarded the Individual Artist Project Grants from both The Illinois Arts Council and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to create new works in 2019 and 2023. She held panelist and executive board positions for Chicago Sculpture International and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events in 2023 and 2024.

About the Moderator: Christine Tarkowski

Christine Tarkowski is an artist working in a variety of formats including the making of permanent public sculptures, propositional drawings, cast glass models, and textile yardage. Her current works are in pursuit of the abstract, drawing on history, craft tectonics, and archetypes. She employs methods of dimensional abstraction to evolve narrative elements that refer to dissolution of order through processes of alchemy or heat.

She has been commissioned to create public works by; University of Illinois Chicago, DCASE, Millennium Park, City of Chicago, Socrates Sculpture Park; Manilow Sculpture Park at Governors State University, and private clients. She has exhibited works at; Corning Museum of Glass, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, RISD Museum, The Renaissance Society, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Devening Projects, Priska Juschka Fine Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center. Her awards include; Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media Columbia College Chicago/3 Arts Fellow, Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Individual Artist Award, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, Franconia Sculpture Park Grant Jerome Foundation, and Creative Capital Foundation.

Tarkowski is a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she’s the Chair of Fiber and Material Studies.

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Tags: Chicago, Christine Tarkowski, Hyde Park, Hyde Park Art Center, Kara Cobb Johnson, Malika Jackson, Molly Roth Scranton, Teresita Carson Valdéz, The Material Dictates Itself, Where a knot begins and ends