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Artist Devann Donovan






Devann Donovan is an interdisciplinary artist and educator originally from Murrells Inlet, SC. Her practice explores memory, nostalgia, and the malleability of personal history through textiles, painting, sculpture, and expanded media. She investigates how her own kitsch childhood, pop culture, and nostalgic anemoia shape identity and distort personal history. Using labor-intensive processes such as quilting, sewing, painting and assemblage,


Donovan transforms fleeting moments into tactile objects that feel intimate and uncanny. Bright palettes and playful forms act like “chewing gum for the eyes,” while beneath the surface her work questions sentimentality, authorship, and the reliability of recollection. By duplicating and recontextualizing imagery from her own archive, she explores how repetition both preserves and alters meaning.


Donovan earned her MFA from Winthrop University. She is a Visual Art Professor at Central Piedmont Community College and former Gallery Manager at the Arts Council of York County, where she continues to teach and develop community programming.


She also teaches with the Cain Center for the Arts, Cabarrus Arts Council and the Tryon School of Art and Craft and is co-founder of Carolina Current Artist Collective, supporting regional contemporary artists, remaining deeply engaged in cultivating accessible arts experiences throughout the Carolinas.





"I explore the relationship between memory and material through textiles, nostalgia, and pop culture. Influenced by the visual noise of my South Carolina upbringing combining tourist culture, television, novelty imagery, handmade traditions, and everyday working-class environments, I’m interested in how identity is shaped through the images, objects, and experiences we absorb over time. My work exists between inherited craft traditions and mass-produced culture, combining the slow labor of quilting, crochet, and sewing with the fleeting imagery of media and childhood ephemera. Using personal anecdotes and familiar visual references, I transform memory into tactile forms through quilting, appliqué, soft sculpture, and layered textile processes. Repetition, stitching, and material play become ways of piecing together recollection, where memories are preserved, distorted, and continually rewritten. I’m interested in the tension between handmade labor and disposable imagery, and how something cheap, overstimulating, or easily overlooked can still carry deep emotional weight. My work often blurs the line between truth and recollection, exploring how nostalgia can both comfort and complicate our understanding of the past. By slowing down fast imagery through time-intensive textile processes, I reframe everyday visuals as objects worthy of care and reflection. Through tactile surfaces and recognizable imagery, I invite viewers to reconsider their own relationship to memory, media, and cultural inheritance, asking what we choose to hold onto and why."





Tell us a little about yourself (where you are from) and your background in the arts.

I am originally from Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, and much of my work is rooted in the visual landscape of my childhood with imagery from my kitsch upbringing merged with my sentimental inheritance and the strange ways memories change over time. I work across textiles, painting, sculpture, and expanded media, often combining these to create objects that feel both familiar and slightly distorted.


I earned my MFA from Winthrop University and am building a career that balances creating, teaching, and supporting my local arts community. In addition to my studio practice, I teach at Central Piedmont Community College, co-founded Carolina Current Artist Collective and work with several arts organizations throughout the Carolinas.


I love engaging through exhibitions, workshops, and community programming, where I create opportunities for people to interact and learn with art while continuing to investigate my own work.


What kind of work are you currently making?

I am currently experimenting with the crossover of fiber and other media, pushing outside the bounds of my established textile practice. Recent work incorporates wire armatures within i-cord structures, woven sublimation prints, cyanotypes, quilting, and handmade fiber embellishments. Instead of approaching materials as separate disciplines, I am interested by how they can coexist and inform one another.


This body of work is inspired by my curiosity and desire to expand my understanding of what fiber can be. I am pulling from my prior experience of working in different media and letting experimentation guide the creation of new forms and visual imagery. I am currently preparing works for three upcoming group exhibitions this fall, using these opportunities to further develop and test these evolving ideas within my practice.


What is a day like in the studio for you?

I try to spend 2–3 hours in the studio most days after work, though during the summer I can dedicate much longer stretches of time to making. I've learned to leave a project at a point where I can easily jump back in the next day. Having a clear next step helps me avoid getting lost in overthinking or procrastination. Once I complete that task, it feels like a warm-up, and I'm ready to move on to the next thing on my list. I usually have my iPad playing a TV show, movie, or some kind of background noise while I work.


Some days are spent measuring, cutting, and prepping materials, while others are focused entirely on assembly and making. When I'm tired, having those smaller, process-oriented tasks allows me to keep moving forward and leave the studio feeling accomplished. At the same time, every now and then a piece completely grabs my attention. When that happens, I become hyper-focused and lose track of time until it feels resolved. I've had to learn when to stop, though. If I work for too long, I start making careless decisions. I'd rather leave the studio on a high note than push through and create problems for myself later.


My studio tends to become organized chaos with fabric scraps, thread, sketches, and works in progress spread everywhere. I've learned to embrace that mess while I'm actively working through an idea. Once a piece is resolved, I dedicate time to cleaning and reorganizing the space, which helps reset both the studio and my mind for whatever comes next.


What are you looking at right now and/or reading?

Lately I've been reading a lot of cultural criticism and essay collections, particularly writers who examine the ways pop culture shapes our identities and memories. I've been slowly working my way through Chuck Klosterman's books and essays and have enjoyed collecting his writing. I appreciate how he treats seemingly trivial aspects of popular culture as worthy of deeper examination, which is something I try to do in my own work. Other recent reads include Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke, Escape into Meaning: Essays on Superman by Evan Puschak, and Pure Innocent Fun by Ira Madison III.


All of these books explore how culture, media, and collective experiences influence the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Those ideas closely align with my interest in memory, nostalgia, and the visual language of everyday life.


To balance out my "research" reading, I usually keep a fantasy or science fiction novel nearby as a palate cleanser. I enjoy moving between critical analysis and pure escapism, and honestly, both end up finding their way back into the studio.


Where can we find more of your work? (ex. website/insta/gallery/upcoming shows)


Currently, my work is on view in the Arts Council of York County Juried Exhibition, as well as exhibitions at the Mint Museum, Cain Center for the Arts, and the Pride Show at Blue Goose Art Supply. I am also a member of the ArtPop Class of 2026, with work appearing on billboards throughout York and Mecklenburg Counties, as well as in Times Square.


Upcoming exhibitions include Tenera Manus, a three-person exhibition at Goodyear Arts in August; No Signal, a two-person exhibition at Black Creek Arts in Hartsville in September; and This Must Be the Place, a three-person exhibition at the Arts Council of York County in October.













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