C. Pazia Mannella

C. Pazia Mannella with her child in front of her weaving.
Assistant Professor
211 Bingham Commons

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Education

MFA, Fibers and Material Studies, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 2008

BFA, Fibers and Sculpture, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, 2005

Bio


C. Pazia Mannella received an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University and a BFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in Digital Weaving Norway, Canadian Weekly Fibre Artist Interview: World of Threads Festival, Dutch Textiel Plus magazine, US Airways Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly, and Philadelphia: Home. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution affiliate Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center, Chehalem Cultural Center, Museum of Texas Tech University, Amarillo Museum of Art, Yeiser Art Center, University of Central Missouri Gallery of Art & Design, Muskegon Museum of Art, The Dennos Museum Center, The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Urban Outfitters Headquarters, Snyderman-Works Galleries, Philadelphia Art Alliance, and The Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences Sculpture Garden.

Mannella's creative research in weaving features architecture with symbolic flowers, laurels, and cornucopias symbolic motifs that culturally represent wealth, prestige, and power. She hand weaves on a Thread Controller 2 (TC2) digital Jacquard loom. The loom operates, in many ways, the same way all looms have operated since ancient time. The warp is tensioned through the loom and the weft is passed back and forth, by hand, using a shuttle. The loom uses the binary system principle to all woven structure and digital images. Mannella weaves in a banner scale that relates to human scale in architecture. The woven banners interface and obstruct. Weave structures are designed to visually constitute a digital image that manipulate and repeat. She is scratching the soft and patterned surface of cloth, the digital image, and architecture. Marking with materials often used to clean and preserve or destroy and vandalize the surface of architecture. The structure of the weave influences how the paint, ink, bleach, and dye mark the surface.

Mannella was awarded a MU Research Board Grant to facilitate the purchase of the TC2 loom to support her creative research and for use by students in the Fibers Area.

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