Tracing Our Pattern

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SHED Projects Presents Tracing Our Pattern, a Two-Person Exhibition by Cora Rose Nimtz and Linda "Mimi" Dyken

August 8 – September 19, 2026

CLEVELAND, OH — SHED Projects is pleased to present Tracing Our Pattern, a two-person exhibition by New Orleans–based artist Cora Rose Nimtz and her grandmother, Linda "Mimi" Dyken, on view from August 8 through September 19, 2026. Bringing together contemporary textile installations and generations of hand quilting, the exhibition considers inheritance not as something fixed, but as a living process—one stitched through family, memory, grief, care, and the quiet labor of making by hand.

For SHED Projects, heritage, legacy, and family have long been central to its programming. Founded in New Orleans before relocating to Cleveland, the organization has consistently supported artists whose practices are rooted in place, lived experience, and the histories carried across generations. Tracing Our Pattern continues that commitment while arriving at a meaningful moment in the artist's life. As Nimtz prepares to become a mother herself, the exhibition reflects on what is inherited, what is transformed, and what it means to carry knowledge—through stories, rituals, and the patient work of making—into another generation.

At the heart of the exhibition is the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter. For decades, Dyken has hand-quilted in the living room of her Mobile, Alabama, home, where Nimtz first learned quilting not only as a technical skill but as a language of observation, devotion, and care. The exhibition brings together Dyken's quilts with Nimtz's contemporary textile works, revealing quilting as both an enduring tradition and an evolving artistic practice. Rather than separating craft from contemporary art, Tracing Our Pattern demonstrates how inherited forms continue to expand, adapt, and speak to the present.

Known for merging thread painting with quiltmaking, Nimtz draws upon generational quilting, embroidery, appliqué, and hand stitching to explore themes of family history, Southern identity, womanhood, and the body. In this new body of work, those investigations become deeply personal, shaped by several years of infertility, spiritual searching, and an evolving relationship to ancestry and motherhood. Quilting becomes not simply a method of construction, but a way of understanding uncertainty, grief, hope, and continuity.

Tracing Our Pattern reminds us that some of our deepest knowledge is learned not in institutions but through repeated gestures, shared labor, and the people who teach us how to make. Opening SHED Projects' first full exhibition of the fall season, the exhibition offers a meditation on the ways creative practices endure across generations—not through preservation alone, but through transformation. Together, the works of Nimtz and Dyken reveal that every stitch carries the possibility of memory while every new pattern begins with those who came before.

Event Information

Tracing Our Pattern
Cora Rose Nimtz & Linda "Mimi" Dyken

Exhibition Dates
August 8 – September 19, 2026

Opening Reception
Saturday, August 8, 2026 from 5-9PM

Location
SHED Projects | 3731 Pearl Rd, Cleveland, OH 44109

Parking
Lot located on Willowdale Ave., directly behind our address.

Public Transit
Buses 51 & 53 stop at Pearl & Broadview
Bus 71 stops at Pearl & Denison

Admission
Free and open to the public

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Press Contact: Gabrielle Banzhaf | Co-Founding Director and Chief Curator, SHED Projects
Email: gabrielle@shed-projects.org | Phone: (216) 266-0589 | Website: www.shed-projects.org

SHED Projects is a nonprofit organization based in Cleveland, Ohio, dedicated to fostering investigative activity at the intersection of art, family life, and contemporary urban habitation. Located in a historic landmark built in 1857, SHED produces exhibitions, printed matter, and opportunities for experimentation and knowledge-building around visual culture and human experience. SHED values art for its capacity to build empathy, connect people, and bring ideas to life through radical engagement with heritage and place.