nosegay | Caitlin McCormack
March 15 @ 10:00 am – June 1 @ 6:00 pm EDT
HUB-Robeson Galleries
8148652563
galleries@psu.edu
nosegay | Caitlin McCormack
Exhibition Cases | HUB-Robeson Center
March 15, 2025 – June 1, 2025
University Park, PA – HUB-Robeson Galleries is excited to present nosegay, an exhibition of textile-based sculpture by Philadelphia-based fiber artist and educator Caitlin McCormack. nosegay is on view in HUB-Robeson Galleries’ Exhibition Cases from March 15th, 2025 – June 1st, 2025, in HUB-Robeson Center’s Lobby.
Caitlin McCormack’s sculpture explores the complexities of crochet to straddle the line between fine art and craft, and its cultural ubiquity. Their body of work synthesizes an interest in phytosemiotics, the oft-scrutinized study of the potential for intercommunication between plants, fungi, and rhizospheric organisms, with research into floriography, the Victorian practice of using plants and flowers as symbolic messaging devices. nosegay refers to Victorian miniature floral bouquets intended to relay a secret message to the wearer’s object of affection and McCormack embodies this idea by betokening their works with sentiments that frequently remain unspoken. Though, unlike the exhibition’s namesake, they do not smell quite so sweet. In fact, the components of this series both directly and subversively impart spiraling, abject meditations on loss, trauma, and frustration.
The heavily embellished sculptures showcased in nosegay assume the form of domestic and sartorial objects laden with text, as well as silent, observational beings. Each artifact bears a message that is simultaneously emphasized and softened by intricate botanical motifs and rendered in hand-crocheted cotton thread. McCormack believes that whether it’s a beloved sweater, crafting to pass time, or for soothing trauma, we all have some relationship with crochet. However, McCormack’s work delivers something unorthodox. Where we expect to find beauty and practicality, they defy tradition without abandoning crochet’s innate attention to detail, which incites conversations pertaining to these relationships. The works in nosegay show us that a therapeutic practice has the ability to ease grief in the face of disease, war, mental illness, and climate change. Most importantly, as McCormack’s crochet expresses internal trepidations, existing in a volatile world, their unique sculptural process serves the power to heal in surprising ways.