Biography

Winner of the Massillon Museum’s Exhibition Prize in 2018, and recipient of the Textile Society of America New Professional Award (2010), artist Rebecca Cross exhibits her work nationally and internationally, including in NYC, Sweden, Paris, Budapest and Nagoya, Japan. Memory is a central concern in Cross’s work, which is made primarily in silk and paper. She is fascinated by mining the ephemeral potential of transformed materials, where line is made by shadows and delicate forms hold the memory of solid objects. Her research includes a deep engagement with the arts of all forms, reading literature, writing poetry, listening to music, deepening her understanding of the capacities of fibers and dye, being outdoors in every season, and apprehending large bodies of water. Recent exhibitions include Intrinsic Momentum with Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson and Isabel Farnsworth at the American Greetings Corporation W Gallery (Cleveland) in January 2019, and a solo exhibition, Ephemera at BayArts in Bay Village, Ohio, October 2020.

Her textiles appeared in Unhinged, a multimedia performance by Double Edge Dance at Roulette in NYC (2013). 

Cross has collaborated extensively with the Double Edge Dance Company, in Cleveland, New York City, and Belgium. After earning her BA and BMus at Oberlin College, Cross received her MFA in Textiles from the Kent State University School of Art, where she now teaches. 

Cross’s work appears in Scott Kraynak’s The HeART of Cleveland (Red Giant Books, 2018); Ann Collier’s Using Textile Arts and Handcrafts in Therapy With Women: Weaving Lives Back Together (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, December 15, 2011);  1000 Artisan Textiles (2010 Rockport Publishers/Quarry Books, Beverly, MA); in American Craft magazine, June-July, 2010; and her review of the joint exhibition in Kent of  Threads: New Work by Janice Lessman-Moss and Rowland Ricketts in the Surface Design Association Journal, May 2017. She facilitates a regular feature in the CAN (Cleveland Arts Network) Journal where two artists conduct reciprocal interviews.

A resident of Oberlin, Ohio, Rebecca Cross was raised in Japan and Alaska, and still considers herself a Pacific Northwesterner. She is married to the composer Randolph Coleman, with whom she has a daughter and son. 

B.A. (English) and BMus (Voice), Oberlin College, 1984. MEd, Kent State University, 1986. MFA, Kent State University, 2007.