Park Open Studio: Fiber Art with Maham Akhtar
Led by a local teaching artist, this drop-in class invites participants to explore creativity through hands-on artmaking under the shade of Scrabble Plaza’s trees. Past mediums have included plein-air drawing, printmaking, cyanotypes, and more. All materials are provided by WSPC.
This program is free and no registration is required.
About the Workshop
Join textile artist Maham Akhtar for a series of hands-on fiber art workshops exploring the creative possibilities of weaving, coiling, and hand stitching. Designed for beginners and curious makers alike, these sessions introduce participants to the fundamentals of textile-making through accessible techniques and playful material exploration. Working with paper, fiber, yarn, rope, and fabric, participants will experiment with color, texture, pattern, and structure while learning how simple materials can be transformed into expressive works by hand.
Throughout the series, participants will create small woven pieces, sculptural coiled forms, and embroidered samples while discovering the rich traditions and contemporary possibilities of fiber art. Each workshop is designed to be flexible and welcoming, allowing visitors to join at any point to explore a technique. No prior experience is necessary, just curiosity and a willingness to make.
About the Artist
Maham Akhtar is a textile artist and material researcher based in New York and a graduate of Parsons School of Design. Working at the intersection of textile, sculpture, and material research, she creates installations and tactile structures through fiber, materiality and experimentation. Her practice explores textile as both a spatial and emotional medium.
Through labor intensive processes and repetitive gestures, Akhtar examines the physical and psychological relationship between the body and material. Her practice investigates binaries through color, material, and form - organic and industrial, black and white, softness and structure - exploring how opposing elements can coexist, depend on one another, and gradually transform through repetition and accumulation. Rooted in both personal and political inquiry, her practice reflects on borders, belonging, inherited systems, and the unseen structures that shape human experience.