{"id":92888,"date":"2025-05-06T11:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T18:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=92888"},"modified":"2025-05-10T13:05:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T20:05:30","slug":"cottagecore-applied-fern-reeds-textile-tevival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/cottagecore-applied-fern-reeds-textile-tevival\/","title":{"rendered":"Cottagecore Applied: Fern & Reed\u2019s Textile Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fern & Reed\u2019s Daily Life installation at Commerce & Craft showcases their signature blend of vintage textiles, functional design, and contemporary whimsy. Image by Shawn Rossiter.<\/p><\/div>\n

As someone who collects vintage tablecloths for their linocut style patterns and whose taste for cottagecore is in her Wisconsin genes, as someone who comes from a lineage of Midwestern farmers and was named after a grandmother who, in the 1930s, practiced a craft that went out of vogue and has since reemerged, seeing Fern & Reed\u2019s vintage linen appliqu\u00e9 works at Commerce & Craft felt like sitting at the Formica chrome table with my grandma the way I was never able to. It\u2019s vintage turned contemporary, the spunk of today interpolating the past, a new life brought into vintage fabrics and linens that remain true to their origins, with the flair of this new day.<\/h4>\n

Fern & Reed is the collaborative project of artists Lisa DeFrance<\/a> and Suzanne Bybee<\/a>. Originally from Billings, Montana, DeFrance is a textile and performance artist who for 12 years was the principal in the performance art group Tripod. She earned a BS in Apparel Design from OSU in Corvallis, Oregon, and moved to Salt Lake City with her artist\/poet husband Steve Creson<\/a> in 2003. Bybee, originally from Anaheim, California, earned her Master of Fine Arts in painting from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California in 2000. Now based out of Salt Lake City after a 12-year stint in Washington, D.C., she has been working on collaborative and curatorial projects with other artists as well as reviewing work and creating art, both digital and analog\u2014a conversation between technology and the physical aspects of art-making.<\/h4>\n

The duo, who share a space in the Bogue Foundry artist studios on 400 South and 700 West in Salt Lake City, uses the type of old linens that would have lain across the buffet in your grandmother\u2019s dining room and then attach vintage-patterned fabrics in the recognizable yet unidentifiable shapes that are signature to their multimedia practice\u2014thus creating functional homewares with a contemporary, cottagecore elegance that meets spontaneity and play. They do not shy away from contrasting (clashing) patterns and colors\u2014floral patterns and cherries on top of stripes, upholstery and polka dots on white linen. Soft and light, these works could easily be imagined billowing in the summer\u2019s wind on the clothesline out back.<\/h4>\n
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Vintage towels reimagined: Fern & Reed stitch layers of meaning into domestic linens, combining the decorative with the conceptual. Image by Shawn Rossiter.<\/p><\/div>\n