141 East College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030

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Innovative, large-scale fiber works once filled the lobbies and atriums of Atlanta’s most iconic buildings. But you won’t see them today. They aren’t merely gone; they have disappeared, many without a trace, taking the stories of their creation with them. With few exceptions, the fate of these artworks remains unknown, as do their original production circumstances. In this talk, Susan Richmond discusses her work with Jess Jones to map the locations and stories of Atlanta’s public textile history, with particular attention to John Portman’s projects. The intersection of large-scale weavings, architectural site-specificity, and corporate interests is an understudied component of the fiber art movement in the United States. Richmond and Jones’ “Lost Weavings” project connects a newer generation of artists, scholars, and craft communities to this rapidly disappearing craft history and its central role in Portman’s vision for Atlanta’s built environment.

Susan Richmond is an associate professor of art history and an interim associate dean of the College of the Arts at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on the modern and contemporary era, with a specific emphasis on feminist practices and the social and material histories of US art, craft, and visual culture since 1945. She is the author of Lynda Benglis: Beyond Process (London: I.B. Tauris Press, 2013) and has published in Art History, American Art, Arts, Journal of Modern Craft, Feminist Studies, Art Journal, and Camera Obscura. With Jess Jones, associate professor of textiles at GSU, she is working on a digital mapping project entitled Lost Weavings of Atlanta.

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  • Kaitlin Frakes

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