Anytime Anything Happens
BY TABITHA ARNOLD.
Tabitha Arnold is a Philadelphia-based artist who creates narrative textiles. Her meticulous, tactile images reflect on the political and personal experience of navigating the urban landscape. Under the rapid fire of the contemporary 24-hour news cycle, she finds that the relentless overstimulation of both media and lived experiences filters into her slow-process fiber objects like rushing water gradually etches hard rock. Her labor-intensive pieces are a composite documentation of the whole environment at once: a portrait of the city that attempts to encompass its contradictions of growth, destruction, violence and concord. Imagery in her rugs evokes the jarring symbolism found in late modernist war rugs from Afghanistan, which she uses to confront recognizable and deeply storied fixtures of Philadelphia past and present. You can follow her on Instagram @tabithakarol.