Erica Dincalci
BIO
Erica Dincalci was born and raised in California. Her early education was at a Waldorf school, which fostered her artistic side early on in life. She went to New York University for her AA in general studies. And then transferred to California College of the Arts to be back home in California and focus on art. She got her BFA degree in an individualized major, focusing on textiles and photography. After her undergrad she struggled to find her place, leading to many years struggling with drug addiction. During that time the intimate act of creating art helped refocus her life. She has gone on to pursue fine art and graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the Fiber and Material Studies department. Her focus is on weaving colors and exploring her life and experiences through art.
Artist Statement
My practice is about exploring the interdisciplinary of weaving to express lived experience. I use autobiographical stories of memory, addiction, mental illness, queerness and loss, as a foundational place to make and create work from. I see cloth as the storyteller and conduit for the trials my body has experienced. Weaving and fiber manipulation is my way of embedding this material with information. I use the digital loom to make work that investigates and reinterprets repetitive patterns from my own life. I work through patterns taken from historical church mosaics from Sicily, or a tile from my ancestral town, or a wood carving from a renaissance frame and abstract them as I go, much like memory continually distorts. Through creation, deconstruction and reconstruction I can rewrite the story and find self-fulfillment and actualization. Through the inclusion of multimedia elements like metal, acrylic and ceramics I can further claim the complexity of experience and what it means to exist as a diverse individual. I embrace vivid atmospheres of color, disintegrated patterns and patchwork cloth as a way to excise these demons living in the dark and expunge them into the saturation of technicolor dreams. Living within the hybrid space of weaving, fiber art, painting, sculpture, technology and craft my pieces are abstract celebrations that seek the joy in the aftermath.