Photograph by Johnny Miller.
At a time when fashion, textiles, and art practice have never been more adjacent, Kiva Motnyk exemplifies the principle that you can have it all. Since 2014 the head of Thompson Street Studio, she came into the field as a creative director for the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, and also executed fabric elements for the fine artist Susan Cianciolo. Motnyk’s current work, which offers a fresh take on the patchwork quilt, draws on this varied experience; she has the technical repertoire of a skilled fiber artist, but issues her work in discrete annual collections, like a couturier.
Motnyk often pieces together fabrics of varying hues and degrees of transparency, achieving a painterly effect somewhat comparable to stained glass—an analogy that is particularly evident in her room dividers. The palette of each collection is developed from the ground up, literally, using foraged dye plants, an echo of experiments undertaken in the 1960s by artists such as Alice Kagawa Parrott.
Untitled textile in naturally dyed fabric remnants, silk linen and cotton. Hand-pieced and embroidered, stretched inside a Baltic birch frame. Designed and made by Kiva Motnyk / Thompson Street Studio, USA, 2020.
52.5" L x .75" W x 74" H
133.4cm L x 1.9cm W x 188cm H
FA145