A Conversation with Kathryn Pannepacker

Ahead of Kathryn Pannepacker’s upcoming solo exhibition at the William Way LGBT Community Center, You Are Welcome Here. I Saved a Chair for You (opening on Thursday, September 11, 6-8PM), curator and Exhibition Manager Jake Foster sat down to discuss Pannepacker’s journey as an artist, themes of the exhibition, engagement with community work, and our upcoming 5-Week Fiber Art Workshop.

Kathryn Pannepacker, Drawing from I Saved a Chair for You Series, 2020-2025, Marker on paper on acid free paper, 11” x 8.5”w

JF: First, I’d like to hear about how you were first drawn to fiber art and weaving as a medium. Can you discuss how your initial interest in fiber art came about, and some of your formative early experiences in your artistic practice?

KP: In school, in fifth grade, I was introduced to macramé. I started making plant hangers, which led to wall pieces, and that really sparked my curiosity. My dad was a florist, my mom an artist, and my nana knit, so I was surrounded by color, pattern, texture, and creativity from a young age. Those influences shaped my sense of beauty and design, and textiles naturally found their way into my world.

In college, I was drawn to writing, especially poetry, and I’ve always been interested in how text and textile share roots. I was taking all kinds of art classes—papermaking, ceramics—alongside my writing. My advisor eventually pointed out that I only needed one more credit for a minor in art, so I signed up for a weaving class my senior year at Penn State. That one class opened up a whole new world for me.

After graduating, I rented a loom from the Weavers Guild in State College for $6 a month and took a road trip across the country with my typewriter, looking into graduate schools for creative writing. My mom suggested I meet weavers in California, Jean Pierre Larochette and Yael Lurie. When I visited their studio, I was stunned—it was unlike anything I had seen before. They were tapestry weavers, working in a way that felt both traditional and contemporary. I asked if they ever took on apprentices, and not long after, I was invited to join them.

I moved across the country, expecting to apprentice for just a summer before going to graduate school. Instead, I was completely drawn in. I kept writing and performing at poetry slams in the Bay Area, but weaving began to take over. I apprenticed for three and a half years, also working part-time at an antique rug shop where I learned restoration and developed an appreciation for colors, patterns, and history. Later, I went to France to study more traditional tapestry techniques.

Those years gave me strong foundations in tradition and technique, but I also began to wonder how I could make weaving my own. I wanted to merge the old and the new, to incorporate painting and drawing, and to find my own style. At the same time, I realized how much I cared about community and people. Eventually, I moved back to Philadelphia determined to build a life around both art and community.

One thing I’ve always felt is that once you learn the rules, you want to break them. In traditional tapestry, there’s usually a separation between the designer and the weaver. My mentors—Yael, a designer from Israel, and Jean-Pierre, a French weaver—embodied that tradition, yet they developed their own unique way of working together. Seeing that inspired me to ask: what does it look like if I bring both roles into my own practice? That question continues to shape my work and studio life today.

JF: You’ve exhibited at the William Way LGBT Community Center quite a lot over the years, beginning with Works Woven in 2008, Shagging in 2012, and the virtual group exhibition Generations: Becoming Our Culture in 2022 (see the virtual exhibition here). Can you describe how your practice has evolved across these exhibitions and eras of your work?

KP: When I think back to Works Woven in 2008, I was experimenting with paper cutouts and translating them into weaving. I’ve always looked for ways to interpret designs that reflect the everyday moment of my life. And by the time of Shagging in 2012, I had been creating textile installations outdoors—tying knotted pieces onto chain-link fences in neglected neighborhoods. That work made me curious: what would it mean to bring the chain-link fence into the gallery space? That question inspired Shagging and pushed me to explore the boundary between inside and outside, private and public.

At that time, I was also experimenting with different materials beyond the traditional cotton warp and wool weft. I tried nylon, silk, caution tape, even Q-tips—wanting to see what happened when unusual textures entered the work. By contrast, Shagging focused more on structure and scale, using the fence itself as a foundation for the designs.

For my more recent work, I’ve become very interested in breaking some of the traditional tapestry “rules” I learned during my apprenticeship—like always covering the warp or keeping the edges tightly bound. I’ve given myself permission to leave areas exposed, to follow intuition rather than perfectionism, while still holding onto structural integrity. This series has become much more narrative and figurative, with lines and stories woven into the textiles.

I work from enlarged drawings, using a “cartoon” behind the warp as a guide, but it’s not a paint-by-number process. It’s more like a roadmap for scale and placement, while I improvise with colors and textures. I blend yarns each time I sit at the loom, using odd materials gifted to me by friends, which creates subtle color shifts. That painterly mixing of fibers gives the work a richness that’s very important to me.

JF: Yes, I see that. As a painter, I’m drawn to the complexity of your surfaces—the way fibers mix like brushstrokes, creating depth and variation.

KP: Thank you. That connection to drawing and painting is important for me. Drawing is immediate and gestural, while weaving is slow and exacting. I need both. The weaving grounds me in discipline and craft, but the drawing gives me freedom—breath in and breath out. Together, they balance my practice.

Kathryn Pannepacker, I Saved a Chair for You, Checkerboard Rug, 2025, Hand woven shag tapestry on pipe loom with mixed fibers, 52” x 52”w

JF: Your new body of work, which you’re exhibiting here for the first time, features recurring imagery of chairs. Why chairs, and why debut this series at William Way?

KP: I’ve always loved chairs, but during COVID, I apprenticed with a master chair caner, Nick Thaete, in Germantown. I still visit his studio regularly—it’s become part of my self-care practice. That experience brought the chair motif strongly into my life, and I began a whole series of chair drawings.

For me, the chair is deeply symbolic: it represents welcome, sanctuary, and community. An empty chair can signify loss, or the act of holding space for someone who is absent but still present in memory. Across cultures, chairs can embody hospitality and inclusion.

I’ve shown chair drawings in Nick’s shop and other alternative venues—hair salons, small community spaces—but William Way feels especially right for this body of work. As a queer woman, I feel at home here, and I wanted to debut large-scale chair pieces in a space that holds community at its heart. The gallery walls invite work of scale, and I wanted to challenge myself to create large, detailed, figurative pieces that merge my expressive drawing style with tapestry technique.

JF: I think visitors will really respond to that—first encountering the work at a distance, then moving closer to appreciate the intricate details, and finally connecting with the themes.

KP: That’s exactly my hope.

JF: Community work is also a large part of your life. For about nine years, you’ve done art-based harm reduction and wellness support in Kensington with people in active addiction, many of whom are unsheltered. Can you talk about the relationship between that community work and your studio practice?

KP: In the early 1990s, I made a deliberate decision to live as both a studio artist and a community artist. Since then, I’ve facilitated workshops with incarcerated people, people with disabilities, people in recovery, and unsheltered communities. I’m drawn to working with people in difficult circumstances, and I’ve seen again and again how making art can bring moments of hope, grounding, and connection.

At the same time, I need the balance of my private studio practice. Community work can be intense, even overwhelming. Weaving allows me to refill my well, process what I experience, and to create from a place of care.

The work in this exhibition reflects that balance. Some pieces rework older textiles into new statements, like Housing for All, which speaks to housing insecurity. Others come from my ongoing Narcan Prayer Rug series, inspired by traditional carpets but addressing the overdose crisis. I wanted to make one specifically for the LGBTQ community, because stigma and shame are still so pervasive.

There are also text-based works, like Revolving Door, which captures my frustration with systemic failures around addiction and housing. Writing those words repetitively into the textile is cathartic—it’s both testimony and resistance. Another piece, a drawing of myself doing a string dance, incorporates words like “belonging” and “connection” into the lines, tying text and textile together.

Kathryn Pannepacker, They released him from jail with no where to go, 2022-2025, Marker on paper on acid free paper, 7” x 10”w

I’ve also created works responding to global events, like Peace for Ukraine and another I’ll be weaving live during the exhibition for Gaza. For me, art is both personal and communal—it’s about processing grief and injustice, but also weaving together spaces of care and belonging.

JF: Speaking of community, starting September 17th, you’ll also be facilitating a free 5 Week Fiber Art Workshop in conjunction with this exhibition on Wednesday afternoons, 2-4PM. What can participants expect, and what do you hope they take away?

KP: I’m really looking forward to creating a small sanctuary studio together during those weeks. I’ll bring in different fiber techniques—woven painting, stitching, wrapping, knotting, braiding, and text-based approaches—so participants can try a range of processes. It won’t be about mastering technique or making perfect objects, but about play, exploration, and connection.

We’ll work both individually and collectively. Sometimes we’ll focus on personal expression, other times we’ll contribute to a larger shared piece. I want people to experience fiber art as a way to slow down, to be present, and to engage their hands as well as their imaginations. The act of touching yarn, thread, and fabric can be grounding in itself.

Most of the workshops focus on different aspects of weaving (on September 17th, 24th, and October 1st), but there is also a “Bitch and Stitch” workshop on October 8th, where people can bring whatever project they’re working on and just stitch, knit, or crochet together. And I’m also really excited about the final workshop, a chair caning workshop with Nick Thaete on October 15th — it’s another way of honoring fiber traditions while also connecting people through hands-on making. Finally, I’ll be giving an Artist Talk on Wednesday, October 22nd, 6-8PM about my own practice and how community work has helped shape it. 

My hope is that participants leave with a sense of belonging and creative confidence. Fiber art is accessible—everyone has some relationship to cloth, whether through clothing, blankets, or family traditions. By engaging with those materials, we tap into memory, care, and community.

JF: It sounds like the workshops mirror your own balance between studio practice and community work—creating space for both personal reflection and collective making.

KP: Exactly. That balance has always been at the heart of what I do, and I think William Way is the perfect place for it. This exhibition is about weaving threads—of tradition and innovation, of personal and communal stories, of grief and resilience—into something that welcomes people in.

About the Exhibition:

The William Way LGBT Community Center presents You Are Welcome Here; I Saved a Chair for You, an exhibition of weavings and drawings by fiber artist Kathryn Pannepacker, on view from September 11th to October 23rd, 2025. In this new body of work, Pannepacker works with a recurring motif of chairs, which imply spaces to gather and create community. These images start in the form of marker drawings, which are translated into large weavings completed on a loom in a time-intensive process. The exhibition and its programming aims to cultivate a space of radical inclusivity, inviting people to build community and support through a variety of art workshops and community gatherings.

Join us for the Opening Reception on Thursday, Sept 11th, 6-8PM and our Artist Talk on Wednesday, October 22nd, 6-8PM.Also register for our 5-week Fiber Art Workshop on Wednesday afternoons. For more information and to register for our workshops, visit waygay.org/i-saved-a-chair-for-you