“The Cape” is a 24-inch-by-36-inch piece by Han Cao that will be featured in an exhibition at Art on Main. Courtesy photo.
Art on Main’s latest exhibit combines vintage photos and postcards with embroidery.
Dallas-based self-taught fiber artist Han Cao’s show Second Nature, which opens Thursday, Jan. 15, is all about taking ordinary images and transforming them into avant-garde fiber artworks. In Cao’s pieces, clothes become more ornate, faces turn into dandelion-looking blooms and green thread runs through hands. In some examples, there seems to be a floral motif to her work.
Han Cao’s “They grow like weeds” is almost 6 feet long. Courtesy photo.
“Through delicate stitching and layered threads, Cao reimagines memory, identity and the personal histories embedded in everyday photographs,” reads a press release from Art on Main. “Her work highlights the ways we integrate experience and environment into our inner lives — our ‘second nature’ — suggesting that seeing is never passive, but deeply reflective.”
Cao’s talent with fiber arts is influenced by her mother’s work as a seamstress, according to the press release. Her work has been exhibited in multiple spaces in the country as well as in private collections internationally. Last summer, she won the Edmund Craig Memorial Award at the 12th Annual Texas Juried Exhibition at Fort Worth’s Artspace 111.
Second Nature will be on display through Feb. 7 and can be viewed from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays or by appointment. The opening reception will take place at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 17, and the closing reception will be at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 7.
“The sisters, seated” by Han Cao is about the same size as “The Cape.” Courtesy photo.
