Artist: April Dauscha

Exhibition Title: Perpetual Care

Exhibition Dates: September 9 - October 16, 2026

Reception: October 15, 2026

Bio:

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, April Dauscha received her BFA in fashion design at the International Academy of Design and Technology and her MFA in fiber from Virginia Commonwealth University. April has served on the board of directors for the Surface Design Association (SDA) and is one of the founding members of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville (TSA GVL). She has been represented by Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, Virginia and her work has been featured in Vogue Portugal. She has exhibited her work nationally, at the Fuller Craft Museum, MANA Contemporary, and Tracey Morgan Gallery, and internationally in Berlin, Cape Town, Jerusalem, and Belgrade. She is currently heading the fiber arts program at the Fine Arts Center, a performing and visual arts high school, in Greenville, South Carolina. Her work can be viewed on her personal website.  

Artist Statement:

My work explores topics like memory, motherhood, and loss through personal narrative and the visual language of Catholic ritual and iconography. Working across installation, performance, photography, and moving image, I examine how objects and gestures can function as acts of devotion, remembrance, and repair.

Influenced by the body, costume history, and Victorian culture, I work with materials that carry the traces of lived experience - hair, textiles, family heirlooms, and historic garments. Often associated with rites of passage, these objects become vessels for grief, nostalgia, and the passage of time.

Through sewing, embellishment, and handwork, I create garments, sculptures, and performative images that function as portraits, memorials, and reliquaries. By constructing imagined rituals and personal altars, I reflect on the intimate histories held within objects, bodies, and inherited traditions.

Perpetual Care explores the maternal body as a site of sacrifice, endurance, and care. It is an examination of motherhood as both performance and ritual. Using the body, handmade objects, and symbolic materials to elevate the repetitive labor of motherhood, the resulting sculptures, photographs, and moving images act as artifacts, vestiges, and relics of these ephemeral acts, while evoking themes of sacrifice and devotion