Soft Edges
Devan Horton
Quilt paintings / plant-based installation
Artist Statement
Environmental activism, connectivity, and collective action have been recurring themes in my work. During college I was a traditional oil painter exploring environmental subjects. In 2020, I began to think of material in a way I never had before and began experimenting with non-toxic botanical dyes and homemade paints. Sustainability and making work about connecting to our environment became my focus. My art explores our relationship to nature through the overlapping intersections of food, heritage, and environment. Using botanical dyes, homemade paints, and reused and raw materials, I create portraits of these entangled relationships through tie dye techniques, painting, and quilt-making. These paintings pay tribute to my Appalachian heritage surrounding gardening, farming, foraging, and resourcefulness. As I explore a new layer of my relationship with plants – color, my work is becoming more about process, and in exhibitions I am including more raw materials, more experiments, rough ideas, and unfinished areas to offer windows into my process. Even experiments once deemed as failures are being included in quilting – another Appalachian tradition of using clothing scraps to reframe what's important. It's the tiny shifts that add up and become important pieces of a whole just like our actions today, however smaller they may seem, that have the power to radically shift our futures.
Artist Bio
Devan Horton is a Northern Kentucky artist who creates fiber work that promotes awareness of the connection and impact we have on our environment. Since receiving her BFA in Painting from Northern Kentucky University, Devan has crafted and promoted her career by showing in local and national art galleries, organized community art events, and curated sustainability-focused exhibitions. Most recently, she held a solo show of her series, "Tending Stems", at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center in Cincinnati, which was her first show using fully botanical and handmade mediums, and was part of the New Woman Residency which she received last year. She co-curated All Else Pales 2 at Studio Kroner which won CityBeat's Best Art Exhibition in 2025. She completed a residency program at United Plant Savers in Rutland, Ohio in October of 2024 and participated in a residency through Friends of Black Rock, a conservation organization in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, in 2021. For the past two years, Devan has served as art curator for the Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit and in 2023, she was a recipient of the Kentucky Foundation for Women's Art as Activism grant. These funds were used to create non-toxic plantable art media using materials such as goldenrod and black walnut for paint and handmade paper filled with pollinator seeds, which she invited her community to create pieces of art on that were then planted in a vacant lot in her hometown of Bellevue, Kentucky. This once discarded railroad lot is now a thriving pollinator haven. Activism, collectiveness, and a love of the natural world have always remained themes in Devan's work.
Sample Work
All Else Pales: 2 was a multi-disciplinary art exhibition curated to inspire reflection and motivate action toward environmental stewardship.
The exhibition showcased five artists whose thought-provoking installations delved into themes of nature, ecology, and climate change. All Else Pales: 2 also featured poets, performers, and environmental scientists who participated in panel discussions designed to engage attendees both emotionally and intellectually.
Through All Else Pales: 2, we aimed to engage the community in meaningful dialogue about climate change and environmental issues. As the planet warmed and evidence of climate change mounted, this exhibition served as a catalyst for awareness, education, and action. Our goals for the exhibition were:
Our goals for this exhibition are:
PROMOTE Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
INSPIRE Future Advocacy and Engagement
FOSTER Environmental Awareness and Action
CONNECT The community through FREE Events.
“I believe art has a unique power to reach the heart where data alone cannot. Through art, we can inspire action and nurture a shared sense of responsibility and hope for our planet’s future.”
— Paul Kroner, artist and gallery owner
