A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Sarita wears a black and yellow strip vest and stands inside a biodome.

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Sarita Garcia

Lecturer

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Bio

Sarita Garcia is a Chicago based artist, educator, and cultural worker, born and raised in South Tejas. Garcia holds a Master of Art in Arts Education (MAAE) and a Bachelors in Fine Arts with a focus in Fiber and Materials studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Garcia is celebrating ten years of expansive experience within arts education, working alongside and in non-profits, cultural institutions, artist galleries and micro-organizations centered on youth based art programming such as the Hyde Park Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, National Museum of Mexican Art, CAPE, SAIC, Marwen and Yollocalli Arts Reach. Alongside working within specific art education programming, Garcia is a fiber artist and printmaker, informed by architectural spaces of her vernacular culture using an image archive of markets to talk about consumerism, identity and cultural hubs. These "Fantasyscapes" showcase a vocabulary of iconography as a means to empower and remix the reality of these spaces. Garcia has exhibited work in Chicago such as the National Museum of Mexican Art, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Art Department, Chicago Cultural Center, Roots & Culture, Heaven Gallery, ACRE, Mana Contemporary, SITE Galleries and Sullivan Galleries. Nationally, Garcia has shown in Laband Art Gallery Los Angeles, CA, City Gallery San Diego, CA, and Blue Star Contemporary San Antonio, Texas. Garcia has been featured on the Chicago Tribune, Hyperallergic and Southside Weekly.

Garcia resides in the West Side of Chicago where you can find her in the studio alongside her partner and two dogs, Floresita and Rocko. There you can hear cumbia and salsa tunes with lots of laughs and warm food. 

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course introduces students to a diverse range of textile materials, processes, histories, politics, traditions, and cultures of fiber and their relationships to contemporary art practice. Historical and contemporary approaches to process and materials are explored as students are introduced to a variety of fiber techniques in construction and surface application. Taught technique can include printing, tapestry weaving, immersion and resist dyeing, knitting, crochet, felting, coiling, hand embroidery, machine sewing, piecework, and embellishment. Textiles have rich and complex histories in all cultures. Examples from across time and place will be explored and discussed through visual presentations, assigned readings, in-class discussions, visiting artist lectures, and field trips.

By the end of this course, students will become familiar with the formal, conceptual, expressive, and political potential of fiber as an expressive medium with limitless possibilities.

Course work will vary but typically includes the creation of technical samples, critique projects, and reading responses.

Class Number

1391

Credits

3