April DeConick: Clay, Thread, and Wonder

• Fri, Nov 14, 2025 - Sat, Jan 17, 2026  9am - 5pm On view

We all recognize wonder when we feel it, yet it remains elusive—hard to define, hard to pin down. Why do we feel wonder? What evokes it in us? These questions guided April DeConick as she created the exuberant works in this exhibition. DeConick is a multidisciplinary artist and professor of the study of Religion at Rice University.

DeConick works in clay and fiber, treating her materials not as tools but as collaborators. Her pieces emerge through an instinctual, physical process, shaped by curiosity, improvisation, and the joy of discovery. She writes: “I was like a child sticking my thumbs in clay, dashing glaze with abandon, tearing fabric randomly, and enjoying the wonder of what will happen if…”

The exhibition features hand-hooked weavings, vessels, furniture, and wall compositions. Each piece explores the intersection of the haptic and the aesthetic, using the tactility of fiber and the textured surfaces of clay to engage the senses and evoke wonder. Her sustainable artworks, crafted from wool and earth, invite reflection on how we shape ourselves—and are shaped—through making, becoming, and caring for one another and the planet we share.

About the Artist: April DeConick learned to hook rugs, weave, and make ceramics in college, but has since developed her own artistic practice. She creates hand-hooked weavings suspended from ceramic and wire sculptures. She also creates ceramic wall art and vessels which embody the spontaneity and spirit of modern abstraction. 

She has participated in exhibitions put on by the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Art League of Houston, Sawyer Yards, Women in Literary and Visual Arts, the Ardest Gallery, Lawndale Arts Center, the Surface Design Association, Envision Arts, and the Rug Hooking Magazine. In 2018, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame for hooked art and, in 2023, she hung her first solo exhibition, Flow Meets Fiber, in Gallery 300 (Houston).  She operates an art studio – Studio 220 – in the Silos at Sawyer Yards, Houston.  She is represented by the Ardest Gallery (The Woodlands). She is a professor of religious studies at Rice University.