POINT LOOKOUT, MO. — The work of quilting and painted fibers artist Michelle Berg Radford will be displayed at College of the Ozarks, from Feb. 8 – March 5, in the Boger Art Gallery. Located in the Jones Learning Center, the Boger Art Gallery is open Monday – Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

“Home/Work: Calling and Care”

The exhibit, titled "Home/Work: Calling and Care,” displays a blend of quilting and painted fibers made by Michelle Berg Radford.

“The repetitions inherent in textile processes such as sewing, knitting, crocheting, and weaving provide an apt metaphor for the repetitions of keeping a house and caring for a family.” Radford said. “When caregiving tasks took me away from the long studio stretches necessary to paint with oils, I turned again to the fiber art and textile processes I had learned as a child from my mother and grandmother. These processes have been engaged by women for millennia as a means of beautifying domestic life and clothing their families.”

About Michelle Berg Radford

Michelle Berg Radford is an artist and educator living in Greenville, South Carolina. She holds an M.F.A. in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She began her studio practice as a landscape painter, but after becoming a mother of three she began making work about the meaning behind motherhood and domestic spaces through her mixed media assemblages and collages.

Her most recent work is an exploration of combining the landscape with domestic spaces, and combining fine art and craft has become a metaphor for the weaving together of her callings as artist and mother.

“The phrases from Scripture and songs that I’ve stitched into the quilts are significant words that I trace to my mother and grandmothers who taught me to repeat truth to myself during challenging times.” Radford said. “The visual forms and shapes are deep echoes from my visual memory, while the fabrics used in the quilts are mostly my family’s clothing. I eventually found ways to integrate both landscape painting and the language of domesticity, a combination that speaks to my personal journey of learning to integrate artmaking and motherhood.”