Soft Edges | Curated By Devan Horton

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.

Sara Torgison (San Diego, CA b. 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus in ceramics and fiber art. She received an MFA from the University of Cincinnati Department of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (2021) and a BFA from Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, CA (2010). Her work often blends media, extending finite and fragile surfaces to emphasize and inhabit marginal spaces. Sara teaches at Queen City Clay and works as a preparator at the Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. Recent residencies include the Lloyd Library and Museum, Queen City Clay, Red Lodge Clay Center, and Penland School of Craft where she was awarded a distinguished fellowship in 2023. Recent awards include the 2025 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the 2024 Michael Aurbach Fellowship for Excellence in Visual Arts and the 2024 Summerfair AIA Award.

Erica Fitzgerald is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, fiber, installation, and material-based practices. Her work examines the relationships between feminine labor, ecology, Erica Fitzgerald – Soft Edges Statement ritual, and inherited forms of object making through the lens of material transformation. Drawing from traditions of basketry, broom-making, weaving, and domestic craft, she creates sculptural objects and installations that investigate care, repetition, resilience, and the histories embedded within handmade processes. Fitzgerald’s practice centers on embodied forms of knowledge passed through generations, particularly those tied to women’s labor and domestic production. Her work explores tension between utility and instability, creating forms that appear both functional and fragile while carrying traces of physical labor, memory, and repair. Through repetitive gestures such as weaving, stitching, wrapping, and binding, she considers how craft traditions can function as archives of survival, cultural memory, and ecological connection. Fitzgerald received her MFA in Studio Arts – New Media from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her BFA in Sculpture from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including work and research completed in Ireland and Iceland, and has taught sculpture, ceramics, and fiber-based practices throughout the Midwest. Fitzgerald is also the founder of Wend Hollow, a craft-based project focused on handmade brooms, baskets, and functional objects rooted in slow craft traditions.

Ciara LeRoy is a multidisciplinary artist and designer specializing in text-based works. She uses several mediums (most notably embroidery and acrylic paint) to make meticulously crafted and visually intriguing work that is also deeply thoughtful and socially aware. She is passionate about connecting art with community development and using creativity to build conversational bridges. Her work has been featured by Insider, Better Homes & Gardens, and Frankie Magazine and some of her past clients & collaborators include Penguin Random House, Madewell, Boxed Water, and Uncommon Goods. Ciara has exhibited at several galleries in the South & Midwest, including the Lexington Art League and Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center in Lexington, Kentucky, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Talcon Quinn is a multi-media, Appalachian Folk Artist rekindling ancestral arts through her leather work, basketry, and jewelry. Her practice is rooted in ancient traditional techniques of our early human ancestors. She works exclusively with materials she sustainably harvests and processes herself such as Deerskin, Bone, Willow, Copper, and Oak. Talcon has studied and apprenticed with numerous artists around the United States and globe on various traditional artforms to develop her artful skills. She deeply values mentorship style learning for its unique ability to transmute cultural knowledge. This value is expressed through her own teaching and mentorships of these artforms. Weaving the past to the present, Talcon's art resonates with contemporaries while connecting them to a deeper sense of place. Her use of respectfully harvested natural materials is an homage to her lineage of mentors and is inspired by respectful interconnectedness to the natural world and each other. Talcon’s Artist Statement: “The goal of my work is to inspire another way of living. A way that recognizes all beings (plants, rock, fire, water, animals) are part of our community and with whom we are interconnected”.

Celeste Malvar-Stewart is a Filipina-American fashion and fibre artist who focuses on sustainable design and its role in contemporary art. Her work emphasizes the importance of how slow and artisanal fashion offers a more meaningful alternative within one of the most harmful industries, and how "connection" can be encouraged by incorporating organic local materials. She works with Ohio family farms to obtain luxury wool and alpaca fibre to create her hand-felted textiles for her ethereal couture fashion and fibre art, using all eco-friendly materials including natural dyes, many of which she grows and forages locally. Celeste has been an independent artist for the last 35 years, creating work under her own labels in San Francisco, NYC, and now Columbus. She has exhibited her work in various museums and galleries and is published worldwide. Celeste is also an international speaker on sustainable fashion and textiles, adjunct faculty at the Columbus College of Art & Design, an honorary member of Phi Upsilon Omicron National Honor Society, and serves on the board of the Greater Columbus Arts Council.