Krista Dedrick-Lai
Embrace, 2021
Acrylic paint on printmaking paper
28 x 40 x 2" (framed)

Artist Statement
I am a multi-disciplinary artist with a wide-ranging practice that includes painting, drawing, weaving and sculpture. I am drawn to bright colors, chunky mark-making, uneven textures, and artwork that shows evidence of the human hand. A lot of what I am thinking about when I'm making artwork, whether that's a figurative painting or sculpture made of garden hoses and old clothes, is how to find a way through difficult circumstances or difficult feelings, into a place that is a little easier and, perhaps, even beautiful. My work is rooted in the human experience of carving out joy and connection amid a fragile, shattering world. Personal history and chronic illness inform my work. The bittersweet and often painful realities of being a woman and mother are ever present; peeking out from between the cracks like an underpainting.

Translucent, anonymous figures navigate the psychological space of my paintings. These figures build, weave, and dismantle themselves and their environments. Landscapes that are sometimes threatening and sometimes exuberant tangle with these bodies; enveloping, embracing, or spilling from within them. The construction of my fiber and mixed media works is a mirror of the way the figures in my paintings behave; creating, dismantling, and reassembling. Finding the beauty in the decay. "Treasures" trash picked by my family and I as we walk around our urban community are woven into small blankets or tucked into handmade pockets. These pieces become a record of my family's time experiencing and metabolizing our little corner of the world, as well as a symbol of the paradoxical responsibility and powerlessness that are inherent in parenting. I paint, weave and sew bittersweet realities into art pieces; a meditation on radical joy, hope and longing.

Artist Bio
Krista Dedrick-Lai is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in the human experience of carving out joy and connection in the midst of struggle, uncertainty and collapse. Using painterly brush strokes and irreverent weaving techniques Dedrick-Lai negotiates the nonlinear space of healing and acceptance, perpetually carving out spaces of light in the dark, and methodically making a way forward. After earning her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Krista made Philadelphia her home and now lives and works just steps from the Italian Market with her husband and young son. In 2021 a poster Krista created for a project organized by Mural Arts and Streets Dept was collected by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2024 solo exhibitions of Krista's work took place at The Middle Room Gallery, in Los Angeles, and Chimaera Gallery, in Philadelphia. Threads of Transformation, a two-person exhibition with artist Margaux McAllister, was on view at Philadelphia's Magic Gardens May-July of 2024. In 2025 a solo installation called A Wordless Plea to Unknown Hands was displayed in Philadelphia, in CFEVA's ArtBox on South Broad Street.

kristadedricklai.com

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