rena wood

Tennessee fiber artist Rena Wood employs vintage materials and elaborate hand stitching to create artwork that honors textile histories and past makers.

Artist: Grew up in St. Louis, MO, making arts and crafts and encouraged by her creative parents. Wood’s dad is a painter and retired professor of art. Wood’s mother was skilled in sewing and crocheting.

“I am a fiber artist thanks to them,” said Wood.

She graduated with a BFA in fibers from the Kansas City Art Institute and later earned an MFA from the Department of Craft/Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

After grad school, Wood moved around the country for residencies and teaching opportunities.

She was as artist in residence at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Her teaching posts were in Houston, at Skidmore College in New York and Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.

Wood is an associate professor of fiber art at Tennessee Tech University’s Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville, where she creates work alongside her students. She also has a home studio in nearby Cookeville.

In the beginning: After Wood’s first year at the Kansas City Art Institute, she had to choose a major.

“I decided to go into fibers because, to me, it offered the widest variety of processes and techniques,” said Wood. “And the possibilities seemed limitless.”

Art & materials: Artwork, in black and white, using vintage textiles and intricate hand stitches in varying sizes ($250 to $6,000).

Favorite materials include:

DMC 6-Strand Embroidery floss.
Vintage textiles (handmade/hand embroidered).
Silk dupioni.

Her “Abstract Embroideries” series are stretched on frames and wall hung. The “Portraits” series are framed in floating glass frames and are wall hung.

Other work, including “Cellular Memory” and “Dissemination,” are hung differently depending on the space.

Size-wise: “36 Lines” is an installation of 36 individually stretched embroideries, 12″ x 12″ each.

Another installation, “Dissemination,” is coiled wire and vintage lace. It is made up of 50-plus pieces, varying in size from five inches to four feet.

“I like to create work that is made up of many components that I can install in reaction to the space,” said Wood.

Theme: Memory.

“I use materials that hold the memories of past makers and pay homage by reconstructing their handwork and combining it with my own,” said Wood.

“Many of the artworks in my recent body of work have been made, added-to, and re-made in new installations to investigate the essential role that memory plays in life,” she added.

Must-have tools: A fresh new embroidery needle and good light to see her work.

Inspirations: So many, but here’s a few: