Jacqueline Surdell is a Chicago-based artist born in 1993. Surdell is an artist that uses long pieces of rope, fabric, and silky ribbons to make her colorful abstract tapestries.

While growing up in Chicago, Surdell was heavily influenced by her grandfather’s physical labor working in steel mills and her grandmother’s conceptual labor as a landscape artist. These combined influences created Surdell’s artistic view of “life and work, body and labor, industry and craft, and the high-brow traditions of plein-air landscape painting, merged.” Through this, Surdell became more interested in both athleticism and artistry as she grew older which helped with her work since it requires a lot of physical labor and full-body movement to create.

Because of the sheer amount of materials used and how large her tapestries are, Surdell’s work tends to be suspended by wood or steel rods with each tapestry weighing an average of 150 pounds. Surdell also had to create her own massive handmade looms just to be able to create her work. Surdell’s work is actively seen as a bridge to unite the mediums of painting and sculpture together where she knots and looms materials together with the spontaneity of contemporary painting to reimagine woven canvas.