The Massillon Museum is currently showing a solo exhibition titled “Suspended Animations” featuring Rebecca Cross, M.F.A. ’07, on view through June 16. The exhibition, which is on view in the museum's Studio M gallery, includes a series of drawings on silk and a sculptural installation.
“My recent sculptural work, three iterations of the Biotracings series (2018–2020), is a collection of futuristic, natural history objects, or “exprints” of imagined, extinct plant species, which considers a plausible future, where what is familiar now exists only as skins and tracings of remembered bioforms. Subsequently, in, I was compelled to draw elements of these invented biomorphic figures because I was curious about drawing on dyed silk fabric with equally ethereal pastels. But I also sought in these pieces the immersion of slow work over time. Placing these drawings within dyed waterscapes brought together my concerns about environmental catastrophe with the vast Lake Erie horizon, which I regularly contemplate as I think.”
A recipient of the Textile Society of America New Professional Award (2010), artist Rebecca Cross exhibits her work nationally and internationally, including in Sweden, Paris, Budapest and Nagoya, Japan. Solo shows include "presence/absence" at the Morgan Paper Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio (2012); "Like a River" at the Sculpture Center Cleveland (2013); and "Silk and Steel" at Hedge Gallery, Cleveland, OH (January, 2018). Cross is also a part-time faculty member in Kent State's School of Art textiles area. She is known internationally for her exhibitions of silk sculptures and installations.