Photo: Eloise Schieferdecker

Catherine De Gennaro (b. 1991) is a weaver and textile artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her work directs attention to the largely unseen forces that surround our daily life — from sound waves and light (visible and invisible) to time, memory and labor. She aims to give form to and document the marks of these phenomena while considering the threads connecting and shaping the world and our experience and understanding of it. As a weaver and radio enthusiast, she plays with the grid and the electromagnetic spectrum both as loose scaffolding. Using transparency, shadow, overlap and echo as material and metaphor, she creates a mix of sheer handwoven objects, crochet lace and e-textiles incorporating language, cyanotype, projection, radio and sound.

A lifelong and largely self-taught crafter, she was inspired to begin her first experiments in weaving through encounters with different textile traditions around the world on her travels producing touring theater works. Following a well-timed intro course at the Textile Arts Center in January 2020, she spent the majority of the pandemic in the company of a floor loom in her kitchen and has since maintained her own studio practice alongside her ongoing work supporting other artists as a producer and fundraiser. Catherine has been awarded residencies at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN and Tanglehaven in Troy, NY and holds a B.A. in English Literature and American Musical Culture from Georgetown University.