Elevate: Sally C. Garner

Elevate at 21c presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the Northwest Arkansas community.

The program provides hotel guests and visitors with unique access to the work of notable regional artists, while featuring their work in the context of 21c’s contemporary art space.

Bio: Sally C. Garner is a fiber artist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Garner graduated with a BFA in Studio Art, Sculpture in 2013, and completed her MFA in Studio Art, Textiles at Georgia State University in 2023. At this time, she began experimenting with fiber and textile techniques that were previously unavailable to her — weaving, wet-felting, knitting via machine, fabric dyeing and machine sewing.  

Garner has exhibited nationally and internationally, in group and solo exhibitions. Awards include the International Sculpture Center, Fiber Art Now, National Basketry Organization, and Surface Design Association, among others. Recently, she was the Fibers Artist in Residence at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville, Tennessee. During the year-long residency, she taught courses at Tennessee Tech University, taught and assisted workshops at the craft center, and worked as the fibers studio technician, all while expanding her current body of work, the Symbiosis series.  

Garner is currently a 2025 recipient of the Artist Creative Fund, a $10k grant given to 20 artists each year. She currently teaches foundational art courses part-time at Tulsa Community College and consults for a grant-funded visual art project as the artist-in-residence at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, OK. 

Statement: Forever inspired by the weird and beautiful complexities that are found in nature, I began experimenting with weaving living seaweed at low tide and documenting the impromptu pieces as the rising waves unraveled everything I had done. Since then, my work has been focused on considering the environmental impacts of our actions, especially the manipulative human nature of speeding up processes, skipping vital steps, and using up resources faster than they can be replaced, all for economic gain without regard for future consequences.  

Using the loom and woven structure as a metaphor for technology, my sculptural textile work reflects both advanced and low-tech ways of interacting with the world. I am also interested in materiality — my current attention is on the role of plastics invading our ecosystem. A completely unnatural material, plastic is a toxic manifestation of the idea that we “need” to be separated from our unsterile environment for the sake of convenience. Ultimately, my practice visually shares information and inspires others to take notice of the issues I am concerned about, calling for a more environmentally friendly relationship with nature.