Cassandra C. Jones
Artwork Information
“Utopalypse #1”, 2025
Natural dyes, mordants and tannins on silk and canvas, mounted on wood panel.
48” x 48”
$14,500
“Utopalypse #1”, 2025
Natural dyes, mordants and tannins on silk and canvas, mounted on wood panel.
48” x 48”
$14,500
Artist Statement:
Inward
This piece was woven during a time when I felt pulled inward, searching for myself amid the turbulence of a shifting world. The act of twining or weaving has long been my anchor – a practice that centers and calms me as I focus on one twist at a time, remaining fully present in each moment. The form is energetic, almost muscular, reflecting the fierce need for strength and steadiness in the face of chaos. In the spiral I found a powerful reminder of the growth cycles – how we return to familiar territory again and again, each time arriving with greater perspective and more understanding.
Saga and Raga
This stitched wall piece references both European calendar and a Cheyenne hide medicine painting. I was drawn to the contrast between our Western concept linear time, as expressed in the saga, and the concept of circular time found in East Indian ragas. The sage moves through a clear arch - beginning, middle and end - while the raga pulses with endless repetition, cycling without resolution or conclusion. In weaving these two traditions, the pieces considers that perhaps time itself may be both a journey and an endless heartbeat connected to infinity?
Artist Bio
Carol Shaw-Sutton has been exhibiting her fiber sculpture in the U.S. and internationally since the 1970's with the California Design Exhibitions, the Young American Award Exhibition at Museum of Art and Design in NYC, the Lausanne Biennale in Switzerland, the Oakland and DeYoung Museums in the Bay Area, the Mingei Museum in San Diego and the Kyoto Museum of Art, Japan. Her work is included in numerous major museum collections, as well as corporate and private holdings worldwide. She received two NEA Individual Artist Fellowships, the prestigious Young American Award, the US/Japan and the US/France Fellowships among other award and is a designated Fellow of the American Crafts Council. Shaw-Sutton retired from the School of Art at CSULB in 2015 as Full-Professor, heading their Fiber Program for more than thirty-four years.
In 2015 she curated the “Fiberlicious” exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park, the Textile Society of America’s Contemporary Fiber Exhibition at Craft Contemporary, “Garden of Earthly Delights” at Studio Channel Islands, and most recently “Hands, Head and Heart” at the Ojai Museum. She moved to Ojai after retirement, continued her love of teaching, became involved in the community as a member of Ojai Studio Artists, among other organizations and continued her studio practice. In 2022 she was a member of a group of artists in residence in Morrocco with the goal of creating work for the Casablanca Biennale. This year 2026, she will be Artist in Residence at Taft Gardens in Ojai from April thru May, as one of the installation/sound artists at “Audio Visual” in conjunction with the Ojai Museum Festival with her “Womb Room”, and she will be featured at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art in the Fall.
Her Fiber work spans poetically narrative sculptures, wall pieces and large- installations, drawing on both ancient and modern processes that through an unwavering labor-intensive practice. Each handstitched mark accumulates slowly, conveying care and feeling that the viewer can sense and feel. Over the course of her long career, she has worked with materials from nature to ground her work in the cycles of the living world. Her forms speak to a deeply humble human awareness of our connection to the environment, resonating across the full breadth of our shared lineage.