Dance Doyle "Fight or Fight"

Dance Doyle "Fight or Fight" 2023

Fiber Art: woven tapestry
Dimensions: 61 x 54 x 1 in
Unique
Signed on Verso, includes a certificate of authenticity.

Dance Doyle is an Oakland-based artist. Raised there during the ’80s and ’90s. Dance’s background was filled with years of ceramic sculpture and hand-building. When Dance was attending San Francisco State University in 2005, they took a textiles class and learned how to dress a loom. After college, Dance became self-taught at the woven tapestry and envisioned it as a better way to record what’s happening around them in a painterly way with hand-dyed and some bought natural fibers. Dance’s tapestries look similar to their drawings, pulling all designs from their head. Dance draws a tiny picture, pins it to the castle of their loom, and “eyes it” the whole way. Through years of self-taught trials, errors, and taking risks, Dance grew as a contemporary artist and figured out techniques through experimentation and the muscle memory that came after. The primary focus for them has been telling narratives, based not only on their own stories but ones said to them, that reflect, piece by piece, examples of current human conditions in different overpopulated urban environments.    

From 2018 to 2020, Dance finished three artist-in-residence programs at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE. Dance has served as vice-president of Tapestry Weavers West, and is a member of the American Tapestry Alliance, and the Textile Arts Council at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, CA. Their work has been shown at the Legion of Honor Museum, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Dance has been published in Fibre Forum Magazine, Untitled Magazine's Innovate issue, and was a Chenven Foundation Grant recipient. Then in 2022, Dance was nominated for the Outstanding Student Award, granted by the Surface Design Association, and was awarded the 2022 All-College Honors Scholarship from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. That year, Dance was awarded both the Jack K. & Gertrude Murphy and the Edwin Anthony & Adalaine Boudreaux Cadogan Award in 2022 in addition to later being the recipient of the Barclay Simpson Award in 2023. During the summer of 2023, Dance finished two residencies including being an Open Studio Resident at Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, Maine, and then a Meantime Artist in Residence at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. In August of 2024, Dance completed a year-long Graduate Fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA. In the Summer of 2025, Dance will be attending Chulitna Lodge, in Port Alsworth, Alaska for a 6-week full fellowship. Dance works out of Oakland, CA, and is currently teaching an Extension course at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA.

“Sometimes in family and/or relationships one experiences violence but can’t run or go anywhere to stay safe. This, for me, happened because of a lack of resources and support. When looking at humanity, there's this rich, tumultuous history of problems that have been solved time after time through brutality and violence.” - Dance Doyle