Adela Akers

Adela Akers was a Spanish-born textile and fiber artist, who’s career spanned the whole history of modern fiber art. She was Professor Emeritus (1972 to 1995) at the Tyler School of Art. Her work is in the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Art and Design. Her papers (2.6 linear feet, dating from 1960 to 2009) are at the Archives of American Art.

Adela approached weaving with a mathematical and artistic sensibility. Graduating with a degree in Pharmacy from the University of Havana, Adela met a group of artists, “Los Once,” who encouraged her to make art. She discovered weaving while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago. Later she studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and was the weaver-in-residence at the Penland School of Crafts.

Adela Akers’ weavings consist of zigzags, checkerboard patterns, and simple geometric shapes. Her work has been influenced and informed by pre-Columbian textiles and paintings by women of the Mbuti (Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Pre-Columbian work, especially appealed to Akers because she saw math and geometry in it. Akers was also very attached to using a loom for the same reasons, because the loom is very mathematical.

Journeying from one point to another was a physical and transformative reality in her life, increasing her self-confidence and expanding her vision of the world. These geographical voyages have enabled her to experience the broad horizons and quiet strength of country living, the power of nature, and the palpitating rhythm of cities. While travel enlarged her perspective, her work expressed the sense of journey itself, rather than alluding to a specific site or sense of place.