In a quaint little building, located in the historic Mission San Jose area of Fremont, lies the Olive Hyde Art Gallery. Filled with a variety of different art forms, ranging from mixed media craft, ceramics and glass to their current most anticipated show, their 45th annual Textile Exhibit.

“The textile exhibit is an annual exhibit that goes back to the beginning of the gallery, about 50 years,” said Sandra Patrick the gallery curator. “The textile exhibit itself is on its 45th year and it was one of the first shows that I curated here.”

White walls covered in beautiful and unique displays of different textile pieces features 17 artists that have anywhere between 1 piece to 8 or 9 pieces in the show. Artists worked with different types of clothe, or textiles anywhere from crochet, knit, quilting, sewing, weaving, lace or embroidery.

Textile artists use various techniques to create works of art using yarn, threads and fibers sometimes in combination with paints or dyes, according to Fiber Images, the fiber information website.

“The first show I did and I noticed it was only just quilts and it was similar work in a sense of degree of difficulty, but I felt that it had kind of a narrow audience and it didn’t expose the viewer to the depth of work using textiles and fibers,” said Patrick. “So my mission in a sense was to really show the audience that there was more you could do and you could expand your thought about textiles.”

Patrick then opened it up to more of a fiber show and the criteria she requested artists to use was fiber and or textile somewhere within their work. But the work was then wide open to mediums such as painting, sculpture, video and it began to bring in an amazing variety of work.

“You would never think that fabric could turn into such beautiful pieces of art,” said Elliot Ditolla, a local resident of Fremont. “I think I may have found a new medium to give a try myself; I had no idea that textiles could be so intricate and beautiful.”

The creation of textiles is an ancient craft, whose production has been altered almost beyond recognition and with the introduction of modern manufacturing techniques; textile production has never been the same. The range of fibers has increased in the last 100 years and the first synthetics were made in the 1920s and 1930s, according to Fiber Images.

Patrick, works closely with her assistant Curator Gloria Kim, who handles all the details of the planning of each of the shows, which includes layouts, the installation, reception, and access to the show and artists for the duration of each exhibit, explained Patrick. Her focus however, is the planning of the shows, the selection of artists and their work.

Jessica Cadkin, one of the 17 artists who is originally from Phoenix, Ariz., grew up in Napa, Calif.  “I recently recreated guns as soft sculpture. I took these hard, threatening objects and transformed them into simple yielding fabric pieces: I disarmed the firearm,” said Cadkin on her work in the gallery.

Cadkin attended San Francisco State University and received her degree in sculpture and painting. She has work everywhere from the Olive Hyde Gallery to the Di Rosa Reserve in Napa. Cadkin’s work of fabric guns in the exhibit is one of the curator’s favorite.

“I’ve shown national artists, regional and local. This show in particular are repeat artist and I like to have a mix of repeat artist because I want people to see progression in their work,” said the curator who has been at the gallery since 2001. “I’ll also bring in some very new artists who have very little exhibition experience or maybe they’re a local artist who doesn’t have a lot exposure exhibiting.”

Founded in the 1960s, the Olive Hyde Art Gallery was one of several buildings erected in the 1940s by Miss Olive Hyde.  As a not-for-profit organization, the gallery supports the city-owned gallery through volunteer activities and funding for special exhibits and projects, according to the gallery website.

“I grew up in the Fremont community and I felt the gallery had a rich history also very traditional history,” said Patrick. “I felt like it was speaking to a more narrow demographic audience. I was really interested in work that spoke to a much broader audience and I felt that I could help bring that to the gallery, and you really see it in the Textile Exhibit.”