Tiberi Studios Artist Series debuts October 2 through 11 at Paradigm Gallery, running alongside the 2026 Design Philly Festival. Tickets are free, but the collection itself won’t be around forever. It’s Jen Tiberi’s first curated exhibition, and the premise is genuinely unusual: taking two Philadelphia artists’ work and translating it directly onto fabric.
Tiberi Studios Artist Series Pairs Two Distinct Practices
Mackenzie Vaughan Pikaart works in nerikomi, layering, cutting, and folding colored clay into swirling patterns that echo agate and marble. Her hand-built pieces are designed for daily use rather than display alone, meant to integrate into the actual rhythm of a home rather than sit apart from it.
That domestic focus shapes her whole process, since a piece meant to be picked up daily has to hold up differently than one built purely to be looked at. It’s a different set of demands than gallery work usually asks for, and it shows in how deliberately balanced her patterns stay even under everyday use.
Artists Mackenzie Vaughan Pikaart (L) and Danielle DesBordes (R).
Danielle DesBordes brings a product-design background in tabletop and home decor into elaborate needlepoint collage work, mixing text, botanical imagery, and symbols that nod to the historic craft of girls’ needlework samplers. Her stitches run right to the canvas’s raw, unfinished edge, a deliberate break from the traditional constraints the technique usually observes.
Tiberi Studios Artist Series Brings the Work Into Furniture
Each artist gets a custom bench built by Anneliese Rivera of Studio Anneliese, upholstered in Tiberi’s fabric prints of their own work. Rivera’s furniture practice sits at the intersection of function and ornament, drawing organic lines from natural curves and textures into pieces built to last generations rather than a single season.
That same sensitivity to material shapes everything she builds, whether the piece is meant to hold weight or just catch light. It reads more like craftsmanship than trend. Pikaart’s bench incorporates actual ceramic elements; DesBordes’ carries applied embroidery.
The full show expands from there into ottomans, pillows, and cushions made from the textiles, with yardage of each fabric hung as a backdrop for the original art. Walking the gallery means seeing a single artist’s vision rendered across at least three different physical forms in one room.
Tiberi Studios’ own ceramics and needlepoint work sits displayed among the furniture and soft goods, and fabrics are available to purchase by the yard, made to order in Tiberi’s Old City workroom.
Every piece in the room, whether it’s a finished bench or a bolt of raw yardage, ties back to the same two source images.
Tiberi Studios Artist Series Honors a Textile Legacy
“The goal of this Artists Series is to highlight our city’s woman-owned small businesses and artists, and to bring attention to the rich textile and furniture manufacturing history that originated here in Philadelphia,” Tiberi said.
That history runs deep: Philadelphia’s textile industry took root shortly after the city’s 1682 founding, eventually earning it the nickname “Workshop of the World,” with hundreds of factories concentrated in Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Kensington, and Port Richmond by the late 19th century.
The exhibition runs at Paradigm Gallery, 12 N. 3rd Street, with First Friday hours October 2 from 4 to 8 PM, Thursdays and Fridays 10 AM to 6 PM, and weekends 11 AM to 5 PM. More detail on the collection, including the full artist roster, is available through Tiberi Studios.
A neighborhood that once employed tens of thousands of textile workers doesn’t get that history back by accident. It takes three working artists deciding a bench, a bolt of fabric, or a piece of embroidery is worth building toward that same standard again.
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