Meet the Artists 2025 - #3
As we approach this year’s Furnished for Good event on May 2 at Next Fab, we will showcase our artists who have created pieces for the upcoming event and auction. This year, we are collaborating with 15 local artists selected by our Guest Curators, Damon Reaves and Lawren Alice. Each of these artists works with different mediums, has diverse styles, and offers new perspectives through their artwork. Today, we’re highlighting Beth Beverly, Bonnie MacAllister, Caitlin McCormack, Kiki Aranita, and Michael Weaver. Each of these artists incorporated fiber art into their piece—whether it’s a hand-sewn cloak, a woven tapestry, knitted elements, or detailed embroidery. Check out all the pieces in our auction today!
Beth Beverly
@diamondtoothtaxidermy on Instagram
Practicing taxidermy since 2000 and state & federally licensed in 2010, Beth Beverly is Philadelphia's premiere couture taxidermist, specializing in wearable mounts and unusual home decor.
Her hats have won awards at the Devon Horse Show, Brandywine Polo and Radnor Hunt Clubs. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, AMC's series about competitive taxidermy, Immortalized, the Netflix series, Stranger Things, and most recently HBO's The Righteous Gemstones.
Beverly has been giving demonstrations, lectures and leading workshops on taxidermy since 2013 and her knowledge on the craft and restorative skills have been tapped by museums such as the Academy of Natural Sciences and The Franklin Institute right here in Philadelphia and as far away as The Vadon Hunting Museum in Transylvania, Romania.
This year, Beth created Kinsale Cloak, a hand-sewn interpretation of a traditional Irish garment that embodies the theme Safe and Sound—offering warmth, protection, and a powerful connection to resistance and resilience throughout history. Bid on this beautiful cloak today!
Bonnie MacAllister
Bonnie MacAllister creates collaborative interactive workshops demonstrating her studio practice of embroidery, felting, natural dyeing, and recycled textiles. Her portraits on handmade felt are crafted through embroidery, created from that original figure drawing, transforming it into needlepoint, a quilt of pores, threaded with twenty or more colors, bounded and knotted with each physical perforation, a performative puncture onto the self-healing felt. He studio is filled with vats of organic dyes. She produce her own yarns and threads on a spinning wheel and creates a palette from vegetable based matter. She has exhibited at the Yellowstone Art Museum, the New York Public Library, the Delaware Art Museum, and the National Liberty Museum. She has taught embroidery at Al Bustan Seeds of Change, botanical shibori dyeing at the Barnes Foundation, felting at the National Liberty Museum, and botanical bundle dyeing with wildflowers at the University of Pennsylvania 40th St AIR program. Bid on Bonnie’s tapestry weaving today!
Cait McCormack
Philadelphia-based fiber artist Cait McCormack has exhibited work at Elijah Wheat Showroom, The Mutter Museum, Museum Rijswijk, Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, The Taubman Art Museum, Hashimoto Contemporary, Arch Enemy Arts, The Fort Wayne MoA, Field Projects, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and Future Fair in NYC. Their work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, and Smithsonian Magazine. They've held teaching positions at PAFA and Hussian College of Art + Design and have participated in artist residencies at ChaNorth, The Peter Bullough Foundation, The Wassaic Project, Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, Monson Arts, and the Provincetown Compact Dune Shack AiR Program. McCormack was a 2021 Joseph Robert Foundation grantee and received the Woodmere Museum's Maurice Freed Memorial Prize in 2023. Cait teamed up with Kiki Aranita, featured next, to create two aquatic-inspired embroidery/yarn pieces. Check them out in our online auction now!
Kiki Aranita
Globally renowned chef and food writer Kiki Aranita creates wall-mounted fiber artworks made from rescued scrap yarn, which is transformed into crocheted and embroidered sculptures. Her works have been featured in art magazine spreads and at galleries around the nation, including Showfields, The Ace Hotel, Bobblehaus, and Field Projects in NYC. Her solo exhibition entitled "Yarned Snacks, Sauces and Tins" was on view at the Philadelphia International Airport in 2022, and her artwork has received coverage from publications such as Candyfloss and Create! Magazine. Kiki collaborated with Cait McCormack to create two aquatic-inspired embroidery pieces. Check them out in our online auction now!
Michael Weaver
@michaelweaverart on Instagram
As a multidisciplinary artist, Michael Weaver bridges the gap between fine art and craft at his working studio in his home of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Since the years of his college days, Michael has continually explored the combination of fiber embroidery with what are considered very traditional mediums for fine art making. Exploring different base mediums and substrates, as well as different subjects before finding his muse in the remains of the creatures he uses as his subjects. Michael is most comfortable at his home studio which can be described as equal parts studio, gallery of his artistic friends, and oversized curio cabinet.
Between the artwork of his peers and subjects for future pieces, you will find multiple pieces in various stages of completion as each new idea is an opportunity to explore new themes, techniques, and color application. And each new piece is an opportunity to move his work to its next thread in his artistic path. His piece for Furnished for Good is inspired by his favorite childhood bedtime story, You Are My Happy, and reflects a parent's instinct to shield their child from the world’s uncertainties. Bid on it today here!
