Artist Statement:
Rooted in tradition while reaching toward innovation, I make textile art pieces exploring color, form, and scale. My current work is an abstract interpretation of the traditional art and craft
of quilt-making, exploring geometry, nature, and feminism. The painstaking handwork of my forebears never far from my mind as I work, I am committed to elevating the concept of "Women's Work" and exposing it as foundational to or even on par with  the masterpieces of modern art.
Gravely concerned about the climate crisis and the harmful role that the textile industry plays in it, I have committed to using no new textiles in my art practice going forward, relying only on what is already in my studio or on vintage, dead stock, or repurposed textiles to make my works.

SELVEDGE/SALVAGE

​Victoria van der Laan
July 15 - July 22, 2020

Victoria van der Laan is a textile artist living and working in downtown Albany, NY. Tracing her ancestry through a long line of women who made beautiful and useful things with needle and thread, Victoria's work is rooted in a tradition in textiles and informed by a love of color and abstraction. Never having attended art school, she developed her skill and artistic sensibility over a lifetime working with fabric. Victoria came to art in midlife, devoting herself to a full time art practice in 2017. In 2019 she had her first two-person exhibit at the Roxbury Arts Group, in 2018 and 2019 she participated in the Catskill Center's Platte Clove Residency, and her work was included in the 2019 Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region exhibition at the Hyde Collection as well as the 2020 Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitational at Albany Center Gallery.