Soft Curve, Hard Line (2026)

Sizes variable
Cotton, linen, clay
2025-2026

Exhibitions: Soft Curve, Hard Line, DesignTO Festival 2026, January 23-February 1, 2026

‘Soft Curve, Hard Line’ is an installation of ceramics and textiles by friends and artists Helen Kong and Amanda Rataj. It playfully explores how checks and grids contrast aesthetically and functionally for a pleasingly maximalist clash of pattern and shape.

By juxtaposing hand woven textiles and ceramic forms, each artist explores the visual language of checks, squares, and lines and how they converse, distort, and change between mediums. Presented together, these intersections create a visual contrast between hard and soft, hand drawn and precise, 3d and flat, square and curve. Through orderly and organic lines and shapes, this installation creates moments of harmony and disharmony, and gives us an excuse to use our favourite effect: checks on checks on checks!

Helen and I participated in Within the Weave, a DesignTO Talk on February 1, 2026, with artists Jennifer Coghill and Kathleen Morris, moderated by adé abegunde.

This exhibition was a collaboration with ceramicist Helen Kong of Secret Teatime.