In the HAC Gallery

In addition work from 65+ local artists, HAC's Gallery & Gift Shop exhibits art work from emerging and historically unrepresented local artists through its Gallery program. The Gallery & Gift Shop hosts pop-up events, demonstrations, receptions, and artist talks during Last Fridays & the Art Walk and beyond. Read on to learn about the exhibition currently in the HAC Gallery.

Material Echoes:
Threads, Surface, and Memory

Jen Stone

A sepia-toned illustration of a Russian nesting doll resting in a child's ourstretched hand.

Material Echoes presents a series of works exploring how memory, image, and texture move across material surfaces. Coffee, stitched textiles, and leather function as both medium and subject, each holding evidence of process, time, and transformation.

Several pieces appear as coffee studies, where stain and tone form layered compositions that echo shapes and structures found in Stone’s larger textile practice. A preview work from her upcoming exhibition Rewoven: What We Leave Behind introduces a broader investigation into memory, sustainability, and material history.

Hand-painted leather jackets extend this exploration into wearable form, transforming garments into painted surfaces where fashion, craft, and fine art intersect. Together, the works reflect a process-driven practice grounded in reuse, material experimentation, and the physical act of making.

Visitors are encouraged to write a short response to a prompt on a coffee-dyed paper tag and pin it to a board as part of a growing collective piece!

“I think of materials as carriers of memory. Every stain, stitch, or fragment holds a trace of something that existed before—and my role is to work with it, not erase it.” - Jen Stone

Biography

Jen Stone is a textile artist and designer whose work explores memory, material, and transformation through fiber-based mixed media. With a background in fashion and over two
decades of experience working with garments and materials, her practice bridges wearable design and fine art.

She works primarily with salvaged textiles, natural dyes, and hand-stitched techniques, reimagining discarded materials as surfaces for storytelling. Her work focuses on themes of sustainability, preservation, and the emotional weight carried within objects.

Stone’s broader body of work, including her exhibition Rewoven: What We Leave Behind, examines what we inherit, what we discard, and how materials hold traces of human experience. Across both installation and wearable pieces, her practice blurs the boundary between clothing, art, and memory.