Nicole Yi Messier & Victoria Manganiello
Craftwork is a multidisciplinary design and art studio exploring the nature of craft through science, storytelling, and materiality. Our broad-based skill set focuses on emerging technologies, manufacturing techniques, and novel materials explored through historical and cultural contexts. We work across various mediums including textiles, technology, film, and ceramics, and past projects include public light installations, plant vessels, and interactive textile sculptures. We intentionally engage in experimental craft techniques in both the physical and digital realms, frequently intertwined, to explore emerging experiences and concepts. Victoria Manganiello and Nicole Yi Messier are co-directors of Craftwork.
Nicole Yi Messier is an interdisciplinary artist, creative technologist, and community organizer with a focus on storytelling, community, and installations. She has received recognized grants, fellowships, and residencies and shared her work internationally. Recent residencies include CultureHub NYC, Praxis Digital Weaving Residency, Directangle, and Pocoapoco. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at La Mama Galleria, the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum, the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Prairie Ronde Artist Gallery, and at Incantatio Mundi - New European Bauhaus in Lasi, Romania. Messier also teaches at Parsons School of Design and co-organizes an artist-led residency, electronic textile camp. The work she creates seeks to refocus the mysticism behind machines and hardware through architectural & sculptural interactives and craft. She researches and exposes unknown ways to incorporate how to use technologies in avenues that were not intended, creating expressive, soft, and tangible technological interfaces through digital mediums and experimental craft techniques.
Victoria Manganiello is an artist, designer, organizer, and educator. Her work has been included in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Boulin ArtInfo, Forbes, and Architectural Digest, among others. Victoria has received multiple international, recognized grants, awards, commissions, and residency appointments including from Wave Farm, S&R Foundation, Center for Craft, The Wallstreet Journal, and TaDa. She has exhibited her work internationally including across Europe, Taiwan, Australia, and throughout the USA including at the Tang Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Ars Electronica, BOZAR, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Queens Museum. She is also a part-time associate professor at NYU and the New School and co-organizes an annual artist residency for e-textile practitioners. Exploring the intersections between materiality, technology, geography, and storytelling, Victoria’s multi-disciplinary and installation work, abstract paintings, and kinetic sculptures are made meticulously with hand-woven textiles using hand-spun yarn and hand-mixed natural and synthetic color dyes alongside mechanical alternatives and modern technologies. She is well-known in the textile community as an accomplished artist and innovative storyteller and facilitates many socially engaged projects in collaboration with other artists, designers and educators.