Malathi Textile Art

The Friends of the Library are happy to announce the April and May exhibit of Malathi Ananthakrishnan's Textile Art.

The exhibit will be up in the library Adult Reading area and in the Conti Community Family room from March 29 until May 30, 2025.

Malathi Ananthakrishnan is an architect and textile artist who lives in New Providence, NJ. She develops beautiful designs, experimenting with creative methods to work with fabrics.

Malathi dyes fabrics by hand, sometimes employing a cyanotype printing process with light sensitive emulsion on fabric. She has also worked with resist methods, such as batik dyeing with wax resists, and Ikat or shibori methods, which use stitching or tying as the resists to the dye.

After preparing the fabrics, Malathi cuts and sews them into original patterns, experimenting with geometry and exploring different methods and mathematical solutions.

Come to her reception on Saturday, April 26, to meet Malathi and enjoy her large textile artworks on the walls of the Adult reading area and the Conti Family Community Room of the New Providence Library.

Malathi has documented her methods with photos that she has printed on mounted posters that are on display with the quilts.

She designs the quilts, experimenting with geometry and patterns, exploring the ideas of kaleidoscope and stained glass effects.

Artist’s Statement

Color has always fascinated me from a very young age. Vibrant saris and striking tropical flowers surrounded me while growing up in India. At home, there was always colorful fabric and yarn around as my mother would sew, knit, and embroider. My great-great grandmother had learnt to sew and embroider from English missionaries in the late 19th century and passed it down. I learnt the creative arts from my mother and grandmother, making me a fifth-generation textile artist. Once I started working after college, I had time in the evenings, and I started experimenting with fabric and developing my own style.

In the beginning I made quilts with strips, squares and half squares using traditional patterns. Then, I started to make my own patterns taking inspiration from nature. I learnt to dye fabric so that I could get the exact colors and gradients I wanted. Youtube videos helped me improve my joints and points.

Each piece, or sequence, takes a lot of time to design and execute. I start with an idea or inspiration and then design my own piece. I work out the methods of construction. I have to either find the right fabric in the store, or dye it myself, depending on the colors and designs I have in mind. Then comes the work of actual cutting and piecing the top in the most efficient way. Learning new things and enjoying the process are my main goals.