Kristen Tordella-Williams
Double Web, 2026
Cotton pulp, iron, bamboo
Artist statement
Double Web is a woven, spiraling sculpture composed of cotton string and raw Alabama cotton pulp processed by the artist. The woven lines are inspired by the intricate webs of the wolf spider, a species common throughout Alabama. The cotton pulp transforms and thickens the cotton string, while the intentionally rusted iron radiates a rust stain outward from the center toward the edges. The materials themselves evoke women's traditional labor and embodied experience: cotton and weaving reference histories of textile making, while the rust stains suggest blood, connecting the work to myth, menstruation, and the cycles of the female body. The weaving is composed of twelve lines, echoing the twelve hours of the clock at the center of 24 Hours of Wonder.
Artist bio
Kristen Tordella-Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator based in the American South. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including a recent two person exhibition at the Shiga-Kogen Museum in Japan. Tordella-Williams has been an artist in residence at WNC Sculpture Park, Kijimadaira, Japan, and the TIDES Institute & Museum of Art. In 2023, Kristen’s piece 40 Burnt Books was selected for the second place award out of over 1000 entries in the ArtFields competition in Lake City, SC. Recent solo exhibitions include Inside Job at Mississippi State University, Precipice at Fort Smith Regional Art Museum in Arkansas, and Dark Matter in the Hudson Galleries at Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, MS. She received her BFA in Sculpture and Three Dimensional Studies from UMass Dartmouth in 2010 and her MFA in Sculpture and Dimensional Studies from Alfred University in 2012. Kristen is a former board member of the Mid-South Sculpture Alliance and currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture at Auburn University.
@kristentordellawilliams
