Dance Doyle’s tapestries are punctuated by characters: sometimes looming palm trees, others twilit buildings. Like the 8-bit graphics from a millennial childhood, Doyle’s fragmented parts illustrate cityscapes confronted with history, humanity, flora and fauna. Often tall and flourished with fringe, their materials include hand-dyed wool, silk, repurposed blouses, cotton, and linen. The carpeted enterprises delineate urban narratives as Doyle’s characters careen, cajole, leer, and lacerate the pixelated textile scenes. Doyle’s process reveals the complicated machinations of textile weaving, a practice which Doyle believes helped deliver them from the throes of homelessness, addiction and mental illness. Here, in their practice, we see these chapters and episodes in Doyle’s life illustrated through the carefully hand-drawn, and then woven, images.

Doyle lives and works in Oakland, CA.