Yield: Works by Kimberly English

Artist Talk & Opening Reception on Thursday, February 5th. Talk at 4 p.m., opening reception at 5 p.m.

Yield is a solo exhibition by Kimberly English that examines the relationship between rest and productivity within the rhythms of rural America. Featuring a selection of woven and quilted textiles, the exhibition draws from natural cycles – growth and dormancy, abundance and depletion – as metaphors for the human condition under systems of labor and devotion.

Through processes that are both repetitive and contemplative, English interrogates the moral weight historically placed on work and its entanglement with ideas of piety, purpose, and value. The title evokes multiple meanings: the act of giving way, the measure of production, and the spiritual surrender embedded in agrarian and religious traditions. In tension between these readings, the works invite viewers to consider how cycles of making and resting might resist capitalist imperatives and instead align with a slower, cyclical wisdom of the land.

About:
Expanding upon her undergraduate textiles education from Savannah College of Art and Design, Kimberly English (b. 1994) earned her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Carolina Digital Humanities Fellow in 2018. Kimberly has been awarded residencies at the McColl Center, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Penland School of Craft, Berea College, and The Gibbes Museum. Her work has been featured in various publications including The New York Times, Burnaway, and Design Milk.

English’s fiber-based practice explores the connection between the individual and the collective through historical, personal, and perceptual interrogations of textile structure. Her woven and sewn forms synthesize narratives informed by the American South and globalized labor, investigating the nuance of interdependence between land, machines, people, and the objects they create. Her work has been exhibited widely and internationally, recently at the Spartanburg Art Museum, New Bedford Art Museum, the Delaware Contemporary, the Ackland Museum, Vox Populi, CICA Museum, and the Museum of Craft and Design. Kimberly was the ’24-‘25 Emerging Artist Fellow in Fiber at Virginia Commonwealth University and runs a weaving residency, Tabby Studio, out of the shared studio space on her property in Canton, North Carolina.