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Aaron McIntosh

Cross-Disciplinary Artist and Quiltmaker

Kingsport, Tennessee

Portrait of Aaron McIntosh.

Photo by John Dean.

Aaron McIntosh is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work mines the intersections of material culture, family tradition, sexual desire, and identity politics in a range of works including quilts, sculpture, collage, drawing, and writing. As a fourth-generation quiltmaker whose grandparents were noted quilters in their Appalachian communities, this tradition of working with scraps is a primary platform from which he explores the patchworked nature of identity. Since 2015, McIntosh has managed Invasive Queer Kudzu, a community storytelling and archive project across the LGBTQ+ South.

His work has been exhibited at the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University's Green Art Gallery, the International Quilt Study Center, the Los Angeles Craft & Folk Art Museum, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art. He is a recipient of two Center for Craft Windgate Fellowships in 2006 and 2015, a 2017 Virginia CultureWorks Grant, and a 2018 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship. He has held residencies at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. His critical writing has been published in the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, the Surface Design Journal, and the Journal of Modern Craft.

As an educator, McIntosh is committed to transforming and diversifying the next generation of fiber/textile artists. Since 2010, he has taught in the Fiber programs of James Madison University, the Maryland Institute College of Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, and currently at Concordia University.

Donor -This award was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 09.23.2024

Artwork by Aaron McIntosh.

Invasive Queer Kudzu: Baltimore by Aaron McIntosh, 2018. Mixed-media sculptural installation, archive document wall, event series, and public participation in which queer kudzu stories from Richmond and across the South are overtaking a ghostly replica of the former historic Club Hippo queer nightclub. School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, MD.

Photo by John Dean.

Artwork by Aaron McIntosh.

Invasive Queer Kudzu: Richmond by Aaron McIntosh, 2019. Mixed-media sculptural installation, event series, and public participation in which queer kudzu stories from Richmond and across the South are overtaking a felled Jefferson Davis monument. 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA.

Photo by Terry Brown.

Artwork by Aaron McIntosh.

Freshman Magazine, August 2002 (Broken Links) by Aaron McIntosh, 2015. Digital print on cotton, vintage print cottons, cotton batting, thread, dimensions 60 × 53 inches.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork by Aaron McIntosh.

The Bear with Weeds by Aaron McIntosh, 2013. Pelt of shredded gay pornography, vintage crazy quilt, thread, plaster, wire armature, dyed chenille blanket; romance novels, gay erotica, afghan blankets, digital textile prints of "gay encounter" stories on silk, dimensions 59 × 32 × 27 inches.

Photo by Terry Brown.