Village Well Books & Coffee presents “Free To Sp%@k!”, a group exhibition by Southern California fiber artists Kathryn Pellman, Kelly Hartigan Goldstein, and MartyO, who test the tensile strength of free expression when language itself has become a battleground. Timed to coincide with the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week (October 4–11, 2025), The artists pose a direct question: What happens to a democracy when the First Amendment is treated as negotiable rather than fundamental?
Each artist responds using their craft not as quiet decoration but as deliberate disruption, embedding contested language directly into their materials. Together, they demonstrate that if voices held no power, efforts to suppress them would not be so relentless.
Moving between hush and outcry within tactile mediums of fiber and paper, these works engage the contested public square where dissent is labeled threat and expression comes under mounting pressure. Feminine craft, long considered unassuming women’s work, has a rich tradition of saying what needs to be said while hiding in plain sight. From suffragist banners to anti-war quilts, stitchery has carried protests across generations.
In “FREE TO SP%@K!”, paper and fabric become testimony, weaving words deemed dangerous back into public discourse. The exhibition frames free speech not as mere courtesy, but as infrastructure: the civic architecture that permits disagreement without collapse. It traces the subtle mechanics of erasure—the edited phrase, the narrowed vocabulary, the forbidden subject. In response, these artists counter with acts of making that insist on reclaiming voice and agency. The works both shout and whisper urgent truths, reminding us that when speech is silenced, art becomes resistance. When speech becomes dangerous, stitching becomes defiance.
Village Well Books & Coffee
