𝔐𝔢𝔩𝔦 𝔖𝔬𝔣í𝔞 𝔅𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯𝔞 𝔓𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔪𝔬

Meeting at the seam (donde la realidad se convierte en mito), Needle felted wool, wool yarn, glass seed beads, 2025 This past weekend the culmination of what I have been working on this year opened @wassaicproject . Thank you so much to @willhutnick for your support this year with these works and to @danielleklebes and the whole team at Wassaic for the thoughtfulness and care with the whole exhibition. I am so glad I was able to see it in person. I write about each of my pieces, while I don’t always share, it’s an important part of the work. My mom always told me stories about growing up in Matehuala, San Luis Potosí. She spent much of her childhood with my bisabuelos—Josefa and Victoriano—and the way she described their home has lived in me for years. Certain moments from her childhood repeat in my mind so vividly that they’ve become something more than stories. They feel like inherited memories, part fable, part truth, looping inside me as if I were there too. ⛅️ ✨ 📸: @joshuasimpsonphoto

30th rotation around the sun 🌅 still with bangs 🌀

This is the last week to see "This Must Be the Place" @wassaicproject . It has been such a pleasure to expand on my work for this project. Thank you to @willhutnick for your encouragement on my ambitious projects! I created this smaller piece last in the beginning months of my @surface_design residency. Walking through my neighborhood in South Bend, I am always looking for the similarities to Mexico and the ways Latines have adapted to the Midwest environment with the snow, humidity, and cold. I recently did a workshop with Madres Latinas, a collaboration with Notre Dame, and one thing that the participants shared often was their connection to land and the memories of their and their families' gardens that they left behind coming to the states. There is one yard in my west side neighborhood that is decorated with a capilla, string lights, and dozens of petunias on cinder blocks for drainage. So much of these elements are reminders of Mexico here in the Rust Belt. "Tended to on the Other Side, needle felted wool and yarn, 2025 📸: @joshuasimpsonphoto

“Cubbyhole” needle felted wool and wool yarn, blanket stitch, cochineal, cyanotype, paños, glass seed beads 2025 As a kid, I always played in the cubbyhole storage space under the stairs. There’s still writing decorating the stairs stating “Meli wuz here -2006”. I am interested in the memories that we carry in corners and passageways in our minds. And what parts of the sacredness of the everyday they carry. This was the first piece I completed after beginning my residency with @surface_design and you can see it @wassaicproject until March 14 🫧🌠🌀 📸: @joshuasimpsonphoto

Meli Bandera's @melibandera work focuses on the interaction of ancestral fiber techniques and contemporary practices, such as Chicano Tattoo traditions to investigate cultural shifts and the effect migration and place contribute to a cultural identity. Through black and gray linework, bold saturated color, and story driven narrative, Meli explores Mexican and Catholic histories, and family legacy.⁠ ⁠ Meli is speaking at our 2026 Online Symposium, Fiber & Form. Learn more at the link in our bio⁠ ⁠ Symposium sponsors include Creative Experimenter | Sonja Lee Austin @sonjaleeaustin and Fiber with a Cause @fiberwithacause

We are thrilled to be highlighting artists in This Must Be The Place until the exhibition closes on March 14th. The first is Meli Bandera (@melibandera ). Bandera (they/them) is a Chicana multidisciplinary artist, educator, and curator from South Bend, IN, now based in the Midwest. They hold a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Indiana University South Bend and an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Don’t forget, we have expanded our gallery hours and the exhibition is open for view Thursday - Sunday from 12-5 PM. Meli Bandera’s work blends sculpture, drawing, and craft traditions to hold the weight of memory, especially the kind that sneaks in during ordinary moments: eating bolis on a hot day, the sound of a lawnmower drifting through an open window, or their mother watering her garden just as the sun begins to drop. These gestures don’t announce themselves as sacred, but they are. Bandera builds soft altars and dictates story cloths from paper, felt, and fiber—materials that warp, stain, and sag with time, carrying the same fragility and persistence as memory itself. Using recycled pulp, cochineal, and wool, Bandera creates cloth and sculptures that are devotional, collapsing, and expanding at once. Like diaspora, they don’t always hold shape—they melt, morph, and peel. Currently Associate Curator at the Krasl Art Center, Meli has completed residencies at the South Bend Museum of Art, Praxis Fiber Workshop’s Digital Weaving Residency, and T.e.x.e.r.e. in Oaxaca, funded by the Robert C. Larson Travel Award. As an educator, they have taught at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, Art Academy of Cincinnati, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Their work has been exhibited at Playground Detroit, South Bend Museum of Art, Purple Window Gallery, Notre Dame Center for Arts and Culture, The Scarab Club, Buckham Gallery, and the Ann Arbor Art Center. If you are interested in the artworks please contact [email protected] or shop our online store. Photos by Joshua Simpson (@joshsimpsonphoto ) Headshot by Martin Milat (@martin.milat )

Meli Bandera is a Surface Design Association Member whose work is featured in the Exposure section of our latest journal, Traditions and Persistence. To get your copy follow our link in bio!⁠ ⁠.⁠ 📸: Meli Bandera (they/them, South Bend, Indiana, U.S.), The chair is now⁠ empty and the birds are no longer singing (atardecers y telarañas), 2025.⁠ Needle-felted, embroidered and crocheted wool with chamomile and acid-dyed wool yarn and paños on cotton, 49 x 44 inches. Photo by the artist. melibandera.com | @melibandera

This is @melibandera signing off of the @surface_design Instagram! I hope you enjoyed learning more about my practice! This is typically more than I share and I’m saying that fact to reference one more favorite reading of mine: For Opacity by Eduardo Glissant. I am so excited to be able to share my practice with the SDA community in the coming months of my residency. You can keep up with my work and learn more as well as see more of my recommended readings on my SDA webpage (also linked in my bio): surfacedesign.org/meli-bandera-air/ There are going to be more opportunities to connect with me and my practice through SDA like the Online Symposium Fiber & Form: Tactile Acts of Threading Space from February 7-12 where I will be one of the presenters. Until then, enjoy a sneak peek of what I’m working on currently, on my new foam wall I installed last night! #textilkünstler #artistatextil #fiberart #textielkunstenaar #textilekunst #contemporaryart #contemporarycraft #surfacedesignorg #needlefelting

Penultimate post for @surfacedesignorg 🩷 Another book I dwell on is Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture while making this piece—specifically his idea that staircases represent that passages are locations in themselves. Not just passages, but in-between spaces where identity is negotiated, where you’re neither here nor there. That’s why these works take a staircase shape: they live in transition. I love how the @wassaicproject installed these pieces almost resembling Mesoamerican pyramids. (A shape I’m thinking of using in the future!!) Growing up in near Lake Michigan in the Rust Belt, life has always felt suspended between places: Midwest and migrant, industry and loss, home and elsewhere. The staircase becomes a metaphor for that lived reality. It’s not about arrival; it’s about dwelling in the in-between. What was “just a passage,” we made into a home. Slide 1 📷: @joshuasimpsonphoto #fiberart #fibreart #textilkünstler #artistatextil #textielkunstenaar #textilekunst #textilkunst #contemporaryart #contemporarycraft #surfacedesignorg #needlefelting #beadwork

Last day of the @surface_design ig take over for me @melibandera ! The color pink is an anchor in my work. I did a lot of research into the history of the color pink in Mexico and that led me to researching the history of cochineal globally, but also its history in Mexico. Mexican Pink or Rosa Mexicano is the unofficial national color of Mexico (it also has its own wiki!) When I was in CDMX for the first time the color was enveloped all around me outside— a color expression I had only experienced in interior domestic and commercial spaces back in Indiana. I use pink and cochineal dyed fabrics to reference Mexico geographically and also figuratively. With my piece at the @wassaicproject , cochineal purple (my mom’s favorite color) anchors the pieces symbolizes that Mexico and the border are present even miles away. Some readings that are necessary for my practice are From Red to Mexican Pink written by Margarita De Orellana, Padraic Smithies, Rafael Vargas, Michelle Suderman, Guilhem Olivier, Diana Magaloni, Clara Marín, Johannes Leopoldo Trejo Barrientos, Laura Durango, Marta Turok, Juan Carlos Pereda, Ramón Valdiosera and Ricardo Muñoz Zurita and Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color by Elena Phipps. I keep close the words of poet Rafael Vargas, “[W]e [Mexicanos] are governed by crimson, garnet, russet, / even if we claim to prefer black or white.” Slide 8 📷: @carmelliburdi fiberart #fibreart #textilkünstler #artistatextil #textielkunstenaar #textilekunst #textilkunst #contemporaryart #contemporarycraft #surfacedesignorg #cochineal #cochinilla #rosamexicano

Part 2 of Saturday’s takeover with @surface_design ! While I didn’t make my current works in the studio it feels like I did because I just moved 2 studios down. My studio is in an old dry cleaning facility and I share it with my dad! We recently moved into a larger space which is great because my work has grown literally post grad. In my studio I love to have my test strips up of my cyanotypes, crochet samples, family photos for quick reference (peep my bisabuelo Victoriano in his backyard), a walnut dyed shibori from my time @t.e.x.e.r.e last summer, many drawings and paños I’ve made, personal landmarks in my hometown, and more. I also have a little reading area with a chair made by Izzy K-A @crumb.licker . Also pictured are some older works like my tapestry woven story cloth and my TC2 woven funerary card collage (done at @praxisfiberworkshop !) In the corner, I have my altar dedicated to my ancestor grandparents, and my cousin J. Alongside their photos is the crochet hook and thimble of my abuela Juana, paper pulp votive candleI, family doilies, and handmade tissue paper flowers. It’s really important for me to keep the presence of those who passed and are part of my legacy present in the space that I work ✨ #fiberart #fibreart #textilkünstler #artistatextil #textielkunstenaar #textilekunst #textilkunst #contemporaryart #contemporarycraft #surfacedesignorg

Día dos of my @melibandera @surfacedesign takeover! In my current works (not all of them), I often embroider the edges of my pieces. (And sometimes miniatures within the piece!!) It’s the final step after completed the surface and creating the story cloth. Growing up in Indiana, one of the strongest cultural ties to Mexico in the house were the craft expressions. The quilts and doilies my abuela made as well the servilletas and tablecloths made by her sisters would send her these from Mexico. Servilleta translates to napkin, but it also refers to these hand embroidered and crocheted cloths. I remember being enchanted by the designs as a kid. The purpose of a servilleta is to keep the tortillas warm. And the design is placed often on opposite corners, so when folded over to trap the steam, you can still see what’s embroidered. I have done a lot of research on ofrendas and altars in Mexican culture and the purpose they serve in the home (more to come on that when I share some of my readings). I think of the act of dining as a form of sacred ritual especially when we eat together. In turn I believe the dining room table is an altar— the site where I saw these tablecloths and servilletas. While my pieces aren’t tablecloths themselves I think about them in a similar vein to the dining room table being an altar. Each of my pieces in addition to being a story cloth is an altar. #fiberart #fibreart #textilkünstler #artistatextil #textielkunstenaar #textilekunst #textilkunst #contemporaryart #contemporarycraft #surfacedesignorg