staff

Paula Becker

Part Time Lecturer / MFA Advisor Fibers

Art & Design

Contact

508-999-8904

pbecker@umassd.edu

Art & Design Studio

Education

1993

Cranbrook Academy of Art

MFA Fibers

1984

UMass Dartmouth (SMU)

BFA Textile Design

Teaching

Programs

Teaching

Courses

ART 512: Visual Thesis

The preparation of a body of conceptually focused, original, and innovative visual work for exhibition or presentation. Graded A-F.

ART 516: Thesis Report

The completion of the written thesis, a verbal explanation of the visual thesis which includes research of sources and a discussion of pertinent aesthetic issues, materials, and processes. Graded A-F.

ART 574: Grad Studio II:Fibers

Continuation of major and elective studios.

AXD 226: Woven Cloth

Cloth construction on the multi-harness floor loom. Studio exploration includes hand-spinning, woven and hand-manipulated pattern, tapestry, and painted warp, referencing historic and cultural influences on contemporary artists and designers. Open to all University students.

Paula Stebbins Becker is a fiber artist, weaver and textile designer residing in Rhode Island. Paula’s work has been exhibited at; Cranbrook Art Museum, RISD Museum, Reading (PA) Public Museum, Attleboro Art Museum, Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Marion Art Center, Bristol Art Museum, Narrows Center for the Arts and Fuller Craft. Her work is in the collection of the American craft collector Robert Pfannebecker, the collection of Gerhardt Knodel, the Cranbrook Art Museum and the Saarinen House. Paula was a visiting artist at the Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan, where she taught a workshop “Memory and Memorabilia” and had a solo exhibition “Unraveling” of her work. Paula has researched, and hand-woven a series of Loja Saarinen reproduction curtain textiles for the Cranbrook Center of Collections and Research (1992 - 2022). She has taught as an adjunct professor in the fiber/textile departments at PCT&S (Jefferson University), RISD, UMass Dartmouth and continues to design for the textile industry. Publications include, “Mendings”, Megan Sweeney (2023), “Hot House, Expanding the Field in Fiber, at Cranbrook” (2007) and “Saarinen, House and Garden, A Total Work of Art”, Gregory Wittkopp (1995).

Artist Statement

Paula is an artist and weaver who connects with memory through the process of unraveling cloth. The unraveled threads are re-woven, resulting in an organic transformation of structure, texture, color and form.

“Memory is like a thread that is woven, unraveled, knotted, entangled…forming endless patterns and layers of experience".