Artist Harriet Diamond’s work “Driven From Their Homes” is an installation sculpture that chronicles the horrors of the Syrian War and diaspora.  As Diamond notes, the work “depicts an episodic journey of refugee people fleeing from the terrible destruction of their home city” to an unknown future.  Each figure represent the struggle to cope, to grieve, and to endure.  In the artist’s words, “It is a dark scene, but it’s also roiling with life.”  The scope of this piece allows viewers to be surrounded by the scenes as they unfold.  It is the artist’s fervent hope that by telling this story the “terrible truth of war” will become “more present and real to us.”

Diamond received her undergraduate degree in European History from Smith College and an MFA in sculpture from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.  Her work has appeared in many solo exhibitions and installations, both nationally and internationally.  This year Diamond has been awarded an artist residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris to continue her work exploring the refugee crisis, and in 2013 she was awarded a Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellow Grant in Installation.

For artist Salley Mavor, a needle is her tool, thread her medium, and stitches her marks.  Her needlework is narrative and sculptural; they are presented as “tableaus in bas-relief,” miniature stage sets “with scenery, props and characters assembled on fabric backdrops in shadow box frames.”  Mavor’s works explore the irony, tragedy, and beauty of humanity as it “unravels and mends throughout history.”  She is, as she claims, an evolving artist, striving to “communicate messages that transcend the fiber medium.”

As an illustration major at Rhode Island School of Design, Mavor preferred to express her ideas with sculptural needlework, to tell stories with embroidery and found objects.  She has been practicing  her art and developing her techniques for more than 40 years. Mavor has illustrated 10 children’s books with needlework, including the award winning Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes and she has written Felt Wee Folk, a how-to book.