Unraveling is an exploration of the conflict between attraction and repulsion, expressed through the interplay of two contrasting materials: fiber and clay.

This collection reveals a quiet yet cruel tension—thousands of interwoven linen threads bind and pierce scarred ceramic bodies, their presence unnoticed at first glance. These bound forms evoke a sense of constraint, bodies held in suspension, overpowered yet resisting containment.

Beneath this restrained spectacle simmers an underlying violence—an uneasy, inescapable entanglement. Fiber and clay pull toward and against each other, locked in a fraught dependency where their very brutality is laid bare. What happens to the body when it is made a vessel for trauma? How do we carry pain within us, and how does it reshape the self?

Unraveling consists of seven distinct installations of varying scales. The largest, suspended from the ceiling, stands nearly five feet tall, while another features 30 vessels, each bound together by thread, forming an intricate, inescapable web.

The Artists

  • Kat Howard

    Kat Howard is an artist who works primarily with fiber and natural materials in large scale installations. She earned a BA in Creative Writing and Art History from Brandeis University in 2006, and worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art as their first Manager of Interactive Media until 2010, when she left the museum world to pursue two MFAs contingently in Studio Art: Book & Paper Art and Creative Writing: Poetry, which she received from Mills College in 2013. She has been featured in DesignSponge, Houzz, Architectural Digest and Chronogram.

    Kat creates visual art that uses abstraction, the innate language of texture, and the repulsion/attraction of touch to interrogate her own identity as a survivor of abuse and sexual violence. Repetition and labor are vital aspects to the work; through which the anxiety of longing for touch is palpable. The fevered precision in her art, acts as an echo of the madness in the mind that comes to claim the body when it is a victim of trauma. Looking in from the outside, the control is invisible and can only be witnessed upon closer inspection in nearly transparent threads, thousands of knots and haunting appendages.

    Kat lives in Kingston, NY.

  • Jerome and Benedicte Leclere

    Jerome and Benedicte Leclere are ceramicists who create handmade ceramic ware with a minimalistic approach and timeless appeal. Both born in France, they moved to North America in 2008 to pursue their former careers in advertising, music and production. After working in Vancouver, Toronto and NYC, they left the industry after over a decade to recenter their life around values more meaningful to them.

    They now own and operate their studio L'Impatience in a 3000 sqft space in Kingston, NY. Their pieces are sold in over a hundred stores across the country. They have collaborated on dinnerware pieces with Food52, The Maker Hotel, Wildflower Farms Auberge Resorts and bespoke vases with Sunrise Ruffalo. With a sharp eye for design and simple lines that tell a story, their work carries a sense of timelessness with subtle details, proof of the meticulous care and obsessive perfectionism that goes into each piece.