Fabric Artist Alum Creates Visual Poetry Whose Meaning Lingers

Stories You May Like

‘I Hadn’t Come for the Oddness of the Art World’

Using Found Objects, California Artist Turns Trash to Treasure

Tribute to Europe’s Lost Synagogues Is an Artist’s Labor of Love

As one museum puts it, the works’ sentiments are ‘often as prickly as her materials are soft and yielding’

Editor's note: Warfield prefers they/them pronouns, which we have used in this story, but has consented to our quoting media sources that use she/her.

By Melissa Newcomb

“But when you dig into it, it bites a little bit—usually because I’m making us have a conversation about bodily awareness, autonomy, how we exist in the world, or how our individual existence affects others.”

I think of my art like a siren of the sea: it pulls you in because of the whimsy of soft colors and floating words. But when you dig into it, it bites a little bit.

Based in Binghamton (an hour southeast of Ithaca), Warfield specializes in combining soft sculpture and poetry—creating works that feature fabric letters, primarily in pink hues, sewn together into words and phrases.

Often suspended in midair—hanging from gallery ceilings, pinned to walls, or arranged in flag-like forms—the art makes language physical and abstract, using phrases like “think louder through those parched lips”; “speak from the back of your eyes”; and “palms silently press lovely vessels and melt a warm mouth.”

“In creating sculptural forms from fibers, she steps into a typically rigid and masculine space from a softer feminine perspective,” observes Suboart Magazine, a publication for emerging artists. “Anna’s work is unabashedly feminine in nature, both in the materials used and in its visual cues.”

Warfield’s installations have been displayed throughout New York State, including at Corning’s Rockwell Museum, Binghamton’s Roberson Museum, Lehman College in the Bronx, and SUNY Oneonta.

“Her work revolves around plush letterforms spelling out words and phrases that are often as prickly as her materials are soft and yielding,” Syracuse’s Everson Museum noted in an exhibition description. “Warfield delights in the slippage between words and their meanings, leaving her viewers to read between the lines.”

In creating sculptural forms from fibers, she steps into a typically rigid and masculine space from a softer feminine perspective.

Suboart Magazine

In one site-specific project in 2023, the phrase “Baptized by increasing extremes and drowning in unmet needs” was hung in light blue letters beneath a bridge over the Susquehanna River in a Binghamton park.

Its intent, Warfield says, was to urge viewers to consider the impact of climate change on a city that struggles to meet the needs of its unhoused population.

“I’m interested in the line between communication and miscommunication—that fluid space where meaning shifts,” says Warfield, who studied fine arts and communication in AAP and CALS and participated in the Educational Opportunity Program, which provides additional guidance and support to qualified students from New York State.

Stories You May Like

‘I Hadn’t Come for the Oddness of the Art World’

Using Found Objects, California Artist Turns Trash to Treasure

Some of Warfield’s work invites and inspires the kind of participation that’s happily reminiscent of toddlerhood: the interactive piece “Word Play” comprises a pile of Barbie-pink fabric words that participants can assemble into their own poems.

Her work revolves around plush letterforms spelling out words and phrases that are often as prickly as her materials are soft and yielding.

The Everson Museum

“The use of child learning tools may seem moderately condescending,” they say, "but I think it’s fun to have fun; you can ease hard conversations with a sense of humor.”

As Warfield explains, they were drawn to this artistic media in search of a greater sense of creativity and agency, and out of a need to feel heard—particularly in a society that often dismisses young women’s perspectives.

While still a student, they began creating fabric books filled with drawings and poems, designed to be inviting objects that people would want to touch and explore.

“It let me reclaim my voice and force people to sit with my words,” Warfield recalls. “I wanted that pretty desperately.”

Warfield was drawn to this artistic media in search of a greater sense of creativity and agency, and out of a need to feel heard—particularly in a society that often dismisses young women’s perspectives.

Now, they're helping a younger generation learn to express themselves through art: they have taught local high school students how to create these signature fabric sculptures, with lessons in dyeing, cutting, sewing, and stuffing.

The result of that effort—“Fast Colors Make a Slow Eye,” a dense arrangement of suspended poems—was exhibited in the Rockwell Museum’s entryway.

“I believe it’s an honor for art to stick with someone beyond just their initial looking at it,” they say.

“I’m really interested in having people sit with uncertainty. So I hope that maybe my work aggravates them, because it’s not as clear as it seems like it should be—and that it sticks in their brain for a bit longer.”

Top: Warfield's "Placid Thoughts From Inside Her Eyelids" exhibit at Binghamton’s Roberson Museum in 2023–24. (All images provided.)

Published May 11, 2026

---

Other stories You may like

• 

  • Alumni

  Alum Is an Evangelist for the Wonders of National Parks—‘After Dark’

• 

  • Bear Hugs

  In Asheville, Chef Katie Button ’05 Serves Up Hope After Helene

• 

  • Students

  After Wowing Gordon Ramsay, Student Chef Is Really Cooking