SAMPLER
September 20 - October 2, 2025
Aly Barohn, Katie Ford, Rachel Seburn, & Emmy Thelander

Braids presents Sampler, an exhibition of work by Aly Barohn, Katie Ford, Rachel Seburn, and Emmy Thelander.

The four artists use techniques that suggest utility, but each, in her own way, usurps the usefulness of her materials. Aly Barohn’s textile samples incorporate smocking, a hand sewing method developed before synthetic elastic to create stretch in clothing so that women could comfortably perform manual labor. Katie Ford makes soft, abstract sculptures from technical fabrics like lightweight camping nylon and de-contextualized commercial objects. Rachel Seburn works primarily with concrete, creating minimal objects that echo infrastructure—whether the interior of a house or fragments of a highway overpass—with an indeterminate scale. Emmy Thelander’s series of miniature balconies appropriates the architecture’s form and materials, using concrete, stucco, and model-making supplies.

Sharing practical skills like casting and sewing complex forms, there is a resourcefulness and self-sufficiency in each artist’s project. Ripstop nylon, concrete, and moving quilts recall emergency preparedness and survivalist supplies. In combination, their work suggests interreliance. Their functional strategies promise achievement to come, like tools gathered in preparation for an event. A cross-section of the artists’ practices resembles the beginning of a starter kit for civilization, or one for rebuilding after its collapse. By co-opting industrial materials and techniques—whether textiles, manufacturing methods, outdoor equipment, or construction—the artists define space for creative agency.