Panel Discussion
About
Dr. Sharbreon Plummer will explore the topic of her publication Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre & Textiles (Common Threads Press, 2022) in conversation with Hera Ford (RISD TX 2020) and Siena Smith (RISD TX 2018). As part of Dr. Plummer’s ongoing creative and academic endeavor to re-situate Black women’s voices and lived experiences in fiber art narratives, she will highlight stories of community, resistance, and self-determination in the past, as well as in the contemporary textile-focused work of Ford and Smith.
A book signing with Dr. Plummer and a reception will be in the Chace Center Lobby from 6-6:45 pm. The presentations and discussion will begin at 7 pm in the Metcalf Auditorium.
This program is presented in collaboration with RISD’s Textile Department and the RISD Museum.
Free. Registration requested.
Sharbreon Plummer, Ph.D. is a researcher and arts practitioner with a heart for expanding how artistic practice is defined, supported, and framed through theory. Her upbringing in southern Louisiana informs her interest and investment in how culture and ancestral memory act as influencers of identity and contemporary artistic production, especially within textile-based practices. For over thirteen years, her praxis has involved shaping resources for communities of creators whose work serves as an act of resistance, self-determination, and collective freedom.
A few of her creative projects include her internationally distributed zine Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (2022) and curatorial projects such as Stitching Abolition (Chicago, 2022) and Mirrored Migration (New York, 2017).
Hera Ford is a multimedia artist, textile designer, and dancer. She’s a 2020 graduate of Rhode Island School of Design where she majored in Textiles. Her first interior design collection debuted in 2022 with F. Schumacher & Co., one of the oldest and largest textile distributors in the country.
Siena Smith is an artist who works with drawing, weaving and collage to work out the complexities of everyday emotions, Black femininity and ancestry. She earned her BFA in Textiles from RISD and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Smith has exhibited at NADA Miami (2022); George Washington Carver Museum, Texas (2021); and White Cube, UK (2021). She is the recipient of an AICAD Teaching