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"The Valence Series of works are haptically curative. They are the remnants of material investigations and they, like my current physical circumstances, are fragmentary alterations, transitory, and samplers for its transformation."

"I learned to sew, quilt, knit and spin from a family of women makers and I studied Textile Surface Design by painting on paper. Consequently, my default materials are linen, cotton, hemp, any woven fiber, paper pulp, gouache, and acrylics. Through these mediums I developed a belief in the material language of abstraction."

"The Valence works verbalize a range of forms and edges, using burlap and the textural weave and grid of woven fiber, against itself, as subject and matter. Through mono, contact, and stencil printing, the studies and works build a textual surface of layering, letting the textile be itself and paint be paint. Casual draping, fraying, folds, saturations, dripping, and varying surface tensions, speeds, and pressures are all considerations. Instead of a formal conclusionary construct, these works are meant as a less distilled, yet formative affirmation amid cacophony. Expressing an emotive plethora through disrupted aesthetics, these works link displacement and alteration as their conditions, and they play and blur the lines and spaces between high and low; rarified and every day; perception and imagination; known and unknown; careful and messy; and a thread of references making for what Roland Barthes in A Lover’s Discourse describes as an affirmation of an unthought logic."

— Linda King Ferguson, January 2024

Trained as a Textile Designer yet thinking and practicing as a painter, Linda King Ferguson maintains studios in Marquette, MI and Nashville, TN. She has a MA from Rhode Island School of Design, MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she studied at Penland School of Crafts and Academia Di Belle Arti, Perugia, Italy.

Ferguson’s work is represented by Graci Gallery, Marquette, MI and she has an affiliation with Minus Space, Brooklyn, NY and Channel To Channel, Chattanooga, TN. She recently had solo exhibitions at DeVos Art Museum, Channel to Channel, Lipscomb University, and Susan Hensel Online Gallery. Upcoming in 2024 she has two solo exhibits in NY Artists Equity Gallery and Graci Gallery. She has also exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including, Graci Gallery; Minus Space; New York Artists Equity Gallery; White Columns Online; dodomu Digital Gallery; and Odetta Digital Gallery.

Ferguson was awarded residences at Press Here Projects, Ragdale Foundation, and Morris Graves Foundation. She also was a resident artist semi-annually from 2013-2017 at Cathouse FUNeral, Brooklyn, NY. She was awarded a Personal Development Grant from the State of Michigan in 2015, and a Northern Michigan University Educational Research Grant in 2013. Her work is published in Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, Vol. 113, Presence, Artdose Magazine, and Boulevard Nos. 68-69.

Ferguson was Founder and Director of The Bakery from 2017-2020, a non-profit, artist run project space, Munising, MI. As contingent faculty she taught from 2008-2013 at Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI. From 1992-2008 Ferguson was a Curatorial Board Member for a non-profit, artist run space, Oasis Gallery, Marquette, MI. She has had representation by OK Harris (David Klein Gallery,) Birmingham, MI, the former Owings-Dewey, Santa Fe, NM, and the former River Gallery, Chelsea, MI.