Contemporary and historical textile patterns, embroidery and garment designs are the inspiration for C. Pazia Mannella’s sculptures. Intense rainbow and neon colors vibrate in her work. The symbolic imagery of flowers, laurels, and wreaths represent cultural ideals of power, wealth and will. Common contemporary materials, zippers, coffee filters, children’s barrettes, construction-marking tape, ribbon and mirrored paillattes, are used to mimic the splendor of historical textiles and architectural embellishment. We live in a material world however, we have lost the necessity and desire to create because of the availability of disposable goods that are industrially made. Mannella reflects upon contemporary industrialization and global outsourcing of material processes impacting the environment. She is researching the influence of textile and chemical dye polluting and the disposable nature of contemporary fashion and home furnishing industries.
C. Pazia Mannella recently created an outdoor installation for Open Spaces, The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia, PA. Her work is exhibited in Extreme Fibers: Textile Icons and the New Edge, Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI and The Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI. She participated in Art in the Open 2014, where artists used Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River Banks as their studio space, creating new works of art outside, on-site, Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, PA. She created Swell, an outdoor installation at The Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences sculpture garden, Loveladies, NJ. Mannella’s work has been exhibited at NAPOLEON Gallery, Saint Joseph’s University, Urban Outfitters Headquarters, Snyderman-Works Galleries, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Greater Denton Arts Council, Denton, TX, Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY, Parlor Gallery, Asbury Park, NJ, Decorative Arts Center of Ohio, Lancaster, OH, and Artspace Gallery, Richmond, VA. Her work has been featured in the Canadian Weekly Fibre Artist Interview: World of Threads Festival, Dutch Textiel Plus magazine, Title Magazine, Temple News, US Airways Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly and Philadelphia: Home.
I am fascinated by the role’s textiles play in human experience, unique among cultures, ideological classes, and racial identities. Currently, the collision of floral Tudor English textile patterns and the electric rainbow of hues used by 1970s rock artists inspire me. I research concert and publicity images of David Bowie and the GTO (Girls Together Outrageously) and Tudor English embroidery and garment designs. Intense rainbow and neon colors vibrate in my work. The floral symbols visible on fan badges and royal coats of arms convey cultural ideals of power, wealth, and will. My intention is to illuminate the allegiance and pride in the symbolic representation of specific cultural identities. http://cpaziamannella.com
- MFA, Fibers and Material Studies, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
- BFA, Fibers and Sculpture, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA
Graduate Faculty (primary), Full time Faculty, Fibers At https://visualstudies.missouri.edu
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