The Textile Society of America is pleased to announce that Nastassja Swift is the recipient of the 2024 Brandford/Elliott Award for Excellence in Fiber Arts.
As part of the 2024 TSA Symposium, please join us for a virtual studio visit with Nastassja to learn about her process and current work:
Nastassja’s work span’s mediums and processes, existing in fiber, performance, film and installation. During this virtual studio visit, she will demonstrate the needle felting process, the primary process used to create her work, and take viewers through her creative space, detailing how she pulls inspiration and begins each project, and portions of the new body of work she’s working on currently. Nastassja has spent seven months researching the topic of hoods, exploring the garment across cultures, geographies, time periods and subjects. She has now arrived a six new figurative sculptures that are informed by that research, and will share a bit about that process, and the many layers she’s interested in exploring beyond the three-dimensional works (to include two forms of printmaking!).
About Nastassja Swift
Nastassja Swift is a multi-disciplinary artist redefining her use of portraiture through wool to create work that speaks to geographical histories, ancestry, ritual practices and community. She is a Virginia Commonwealth University alum, holding a BFA in Painting and Printmaking, and Craft and Material Studies. Most recently, Nastassja was selected as the 2024 Textile Society of America Brandford Elliott Awardee. She is a 2023 recipient of the Center for Craft: Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship, a VMFA Fellowship, a Dr. Doris Derby Award, an Art Matters Fellowship Award, the inaugural Black Box Press Foundation Art as Activism Grant, a Virginia Commission of the Arts Fellowship, and was nominated for the 2024 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship. In 2022, she was invited as a Distinguished Fellow at the Penland School of Craft, and shortly after, was selected for a Public Arts Commission in Richmond, VA, her first large scale public art project.
“so I filled my nest with flowers from your garden”
2023
wool, glass beads, wood, foam3
0 x 12 x 12 inches
David Hunter Hale
Nastassja has exhibited and presented her work in institutions nationally and internationally including VCUQatar, Carl Freedman Gallery in the UK, Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Virginia MoCA, Boston University Art Galleries, University of Florida, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art, Ball State University and a number of galleries across the East Coast. She has participated in residencies across the United States at the Vermont Studio Center, Penland School of Craft, the Wassaic Project in NY, SPACES in Ohio, and MASS MoCA. Her work has been published in the Berlin publication – SomeMagazine, RVA Magazine, Colossal and Arts and Culture Texas among many others.
Nastassja is currently living and working in Virginia.
In collaboration with stylists Kiki Jewell, Nyja Amos, and Gracie Jewell
2021
wool, synthetic braiding hair, wood, plaster, resin, satin
64 x 15 x 15 inches
David Hunter Hale
The Brandford/Elliott Award for Excellence in Fiber was established to honor the lives and work of the late and beloved fiber artists Joanne Segal Brandford and Lillian Elliott. Extraordinary textile artists and scholars who were long-time friends, they died within a few days of one another in April 1994. The award, formerly known as the Lillian Elliott Award, became a well-known honor in a very short time, perhaps because there are no other awards specifically designated for emerging artists working with fiber, and because the need is so great.
For more information on Swift and previous Brandford/Elliott Awardees, please visit the award page.
Donations
If you would like to support the Brandford/Elliott Award and future emerging fiber artists, please donate using the link below and specify “Brandford/Elliott.”
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