Maggy Rozycki Hiltner is a textile artist from Red Lodge, Montana who makes playfully provocative vignettes using found textiles.
“Fabric and stitching are familiar to most people: a comfortable and innocuous medium. We all have the experience of childhood in common, with its daily doses of beauty, anxiety, joy and pain. Common childhood events span socioeconomic class, race and gender differences. With these images I am trying to evoke recognition in others of the amazing oddness and commonalities of our individual and connected lives. I like the narratives to be ambiguous and interpretable.
My work is hand-stitched, and I work on top of or with pieces of found textiles. These discarded household goods have a history of some other person’s place, actions and time. I often find these trivial decorations to be ominously full of double meanings. I use carefully planned neat stitches in contrast with kinetic playful scratchy ones to move the narrative and give voice to the characters. I like when the work feels like a Home Economics project gone awry.“
Her earlier works combined the textiles with a classic style of illustration that created bizarre moments, all with a playful sense of humour.The works display great technique with a clever and effective blend of applique and embroidery.
Her more recent works explore different themes – I love the Familiar Faces series which is bound to bring a smile to the face of anyone with children.
I love the vibrancy of Maggy’s work. The textiles chosen for the pieces often reinforce the quirks contained within the subject matter and Maggy’s characterisation is spot on. There is a real playfulness within her work, the kind of playfulness that adults would appreciate and that echoes the naughty child in all of us.
Maggy exhibits across the United States and beyond. If you want to see more of her works, I thoroughly recommend checking out her website or following her on Instagram.
