Join us for a virtual Alumni Artist Talk featuring fashion designer and textile artist Rachel Sherman ’99, in conversation with former Moore faculty members Christina Roberts '89 and Lewis Knauss. Together, they’ll explore Sherman’s artistic evolution, the role Moore played in shaping her unconventional approach to making and the ideas driving her current exhibition, Repetition Compulsion, on view in the Alumni Gallery November 22, 2025–January 17, 2026. Once described as “cyber meets bohemian,” Sherman’s work radiates a kinetic blend of color, texture and craft tradition. Through her label, Malagueta, she bridges global folk textile influences with experimental techniques—an approach shaped by a lifelong fascination with pattern and form. A self-taught rule-breaker at the sewing machine since age thirteen, she pushes materials toward new possibilities, guided by instinct, curiosity and an unapologetically playful sensibility.
About the Speakers
Rachel Sherman '99 earned her BFA in Textile Design from Moore College of Art & Design before heading to Seattle, where she launched her label Malagueta in 2002. Rooted in sustainability and improvisational surface manipulation—appliqué, couching, shirring, top-stitching, ruching, embroidery, piecing and pin-tucking—her work draws inspiration from foliage, architecture, produce, insects, and machinery.
Named after a tiny, fiery Brazilian pepper, Malagueta reflects Rachel’s lifelong connection to Brazil, her mother’s home country. Now based in Pennsylvania, she continues to thrive on the handmade scene, showing her work at high-end craft and indie markets including Crafty Bastards, Handmade Arcade, Crafty Wonderland, Urban Craft Uprising, American Craft Council Shows, PMA Contemporary Craft Show, CRAFT + DESIGN, Cherry Creek Arts Festival and Smithsonian Craft2Wear.
Christina Roberts '89 earned her BFA in Textile Design from Moore College of Art and Design and is currently the Director of Education at The Fabric Workshop and Museum and adjunct instructor at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. She specializes in contemporary collaborative art-making practices using traditional textile printing and dyeing techniques. She is co-founder of Marafiki Arts, a 501(c)3 community project in rural Kenya working with women’s groups to intersect culture, commerce and collaboration to promote sustainability.
Lewis Knauss discovered his passion for fiber as an undergraduate at Kutztown State College and refined his early, architectural style at Tyler School of Art. His focus on landscape began during his first teaching post in Ohio, where distance from his hometown of Macungie, Pennsylvania, shaped his interest in memory, place and comfort.
Influenced by travels to Egypt and Israel—where he began painting individual fiber strands—and by time in Colorado and New Mexico, his work reflects a deep engagement with ecological cycles, drought, fire and renewal. Lewis taught for 28 years at Moore College of Art & Design and continues to explore new landscapes through an evolving material language grounded in craft traditions and ethnographic research.
Photo Credit: Johanna Austin
