Catherine Reinhart

Catherine Reinhart is an interdisciplinary artist from Ames, IA. Reinhart creates fiber work and conducts social practice with abandoned textiles around themes of labor, connection, and care. She received her MFA - Textiles from the University of Kansas and a BFA - Integrated Studio Arts at Iowa State University. Reinhart exhibits locally, nationally and internationally. She has exhibited at the Department of Land Economy, Cambridge University and Cambridge Artworks, Cambridge, UK, and the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS.

Her works are in collections at the University of Mississippi and Kyoto Keika University, Kyoto, Japan. Reinhart is the recipient of numerous grants and residencies, including the Iowa Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, and Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts. Reinhart was recently honored as a 2020 Iowa Artist Fellow, a 2021 Terrain Exhibitions Artist-in-Residence in Springfield, IL and a recipient of the Alex Brown Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence in Des Moines, IA (2022).

I am an interdisciplinary artist who makes fiber art, sculpture, and conducts socially engaged projects with abandoned textiles. These works center on the themes of domestic labor, connection and care. As artist and mother, I am both archivist and field hand, creating studies in the accretion of domestic life and cataloging its labors. Caregiving girds up our society and is based largely on the undervalued labor of women. 

Tending to one’s family and community is built on consistent, repetitive actions which provide comfort, ease suffering, and connect us with our fellow humans. Mending and stitching by hand parallel these tending actions. Through their use, I communicate the transformative power of caregiving. With these works, I join the growing ranks of a constellation of artist-mothers giving voice to the maternal and domestic experience. I give voice and hold space for stories of repair, loss, and kinship.

IA