Bio:

Emily Silver is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work moves between textiles, sculpture, and installation, often beginning with processes of tracing, translation, and material transformation. She received her MFA from Pennsylvania State University School of Visual Art and her BFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC.

Her work has been exhibited widely, with solo and two-person exhibitions including Pep Talk (2026) at Eastern Star Gallery, Los Angeles; Phantasmagoria at Spring Break Art Fair, Los Angeles; and In the Weeds at Lazy Eye Gallery, Yucca Valley. Recent group exhibitions include presentations at BravinLee, New York; DMST Atelier, Los Angeles; and The Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University, Connecticut, among others.

Silver’s research is deeply informed by material-based learning and residency experiences at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Fondazione Lisio (Jacquard weaving), and the Icelandic Textile Center. In 2023, she received the Change Agent Award from NCORE.

Alongside her studio practice, Silver is Co-Founder of LA Tactile Lab, a space dedicated to material and textile inquiry, and serves as Director/Curator of the Barrett Gallery in Santa Monica. She is currently Chair of Art and Art History at Santa Monica College. Her curatorial work and artist-run projects reflect an ongoing commitment to building community and expanding conversations around contemporary craft, labor, and embodiment.

Statement:

I make sculptural weavings that translate language into structure.

Working across textiles, sculpture, and drawing, I embed text, coded symbols, and shifting materials to produce forms that move between legibility and abstraction—where humor and grief sit uncomfortably close.

Shaped by experiences of loss, bodily change, and broader instability, my work engages labor as a form of endurance. Fibers are bound, layered, and reworked through time-intensive processes that register care and persistence rather than resolution.

What appears decorative operates as a system—holding contradiction without hierarchy, where tenderness and force remain visible at once.

Contact: emilysilverstudio@gmail.com