To Be Featured In:  Stories We Tell (Feb, 2024)
Learn More & View Work Examples:  Artburst Studios Artist Profile

Meet fiber artist, painter, and interior design professional, Erin McAllister, whose work is intricately woven with the themes of relationships, human sexuality, and the conflicts that often shape our environments. Her work is her playground, where organic, static, and everlasting elements converge by chance, creating a vivid expression of life’s unpredictability.

Erin’s artistic journey began early, discovering a passion for art in her childhood, that eventually led her to graduate with a BFA in Fiber Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2006. Her expertise in fiber art and textiles has paved the way for a successful career in the interior design industry.

Primarily immersed in the realm of fiber, Erin orchestrates her creations using a palette of bold colors found in cotton, silk, wool, used clothing, textured leathers, and blazing mylars. These are artfully grouped into diverse scenarios – her art is a kaleidoscope where colors and patterns overlap, reminiscent of shared experiences and memories.

Erin’s artistic process is about the smallest details, where materials are cut down and reinvented, giving new life to their original purpose. Within these meticulously crafted arrangements, she explores the intricate connectivity between color and negative space.

Adding another dimension to her work, Erin’s fabrics are often bonded with black and colored threads, serving both function and contributing to the visual elements of line, rhythm, and tension. The result is a bird’s eye view of a visual theater, where shapes come alive, competing and dancing to tell a story waiting to be deciphered by the viewer.

Erin’s work is a testament to her artistic evolution—a journey that involves dismantling, rearranging, and redefining herself. Much like life, Erin’s art reflects an odyssey of self-discovery and liberation, where the past and future collide into the present.

When it comes to painting, Erin’s preferred medium is liquid acrylic paint on watercolor paper, a process she describes as freeing and expressive. Much like her background in fiber art, the colors in her paintings have different levels of opacity, weaving together in such a way as to create new colors.

Erin McAllister’s art is a reflection of her experiences and an exploration of the realms between formlessness and form, light and dark, dreams and realities. Her materials often come from discarded and discontinued interior design samples, showcasing a well-rounded, textile, and fabric-obsessed life.

We are so pleased to announce that Erin’s latest collection will be available at our upcoming virtual art show “Stories We Tell” (Feb 22-24).  To learn more about Erin, her story, and her incredible work, visit her official website.