Continual Coweaving, curated by Purple Window Gallery and running from September 6 – November 1, 2025, is built from remnants of past projects and experiments on textiles from Millicent Kennedy’s practice. It includes garment fragments, natural dye samples, and fabric remaining from completed artworks. All these separate parts are hand sewn into cords and rejoined weaving a web reminiscent of the orb weaver spider. Kennedy’s interest in spider webs is related to their impermanence and ongoing need of the spider to return to and repair them. For the spider this is a solo practice, but for people mending and rebuilding is a deeply communal practice if we hope to sustain these repairs. Over the course of this installation visitors are invited to add their own used textiles to the web, and share about the materials history in the QR code provided at the exhibition site.
Millicent Kennedy’s (they/them) practice is interested in how we archive a physical world in flux. Through hand skills including book and box making, natural dye and hand stitching, Kennedy connects to the knowledge of generations of unknown hands who worked to hold their world together. Their work as a whole is interested in connecting two or more things that could seem separate or worn away from one another. Like dyeing and mending, the alchemy is in the labor and material itself, that lead to transformation. They received a Bachelor’s Degree from Northeastern Illinois University and MFA from Northern Illinois University where they were awarded the Helen Merritt Fellowship.
They’ve received solo exhibitions from Belong Gallery, SXU Art Gallery, Roman Susan and Parlour and Ramp, as well as site specific installations with Charles Allis Art Museum, Terrain Exhibitions Biennial, and Purple Window Gallery. They have received artist residencies with ACRE, Ragdale, Roman Susan, Terrain Exhibitions, Awakenings, Lillstreet Art Center, and the Bridge Program at Hyde Park Art Center. They also serve as the Director at NEIU’s Fine Art Center Gallery and teach at Northern Illinois University, their studio is based out of Chicago.
