Tending to Clouds
Work by Catalina Escallón Rosselli, Richie Wilde López, &  Margaux McAllister
Curated by Jessica Aguilar
September 4 – September 27, 2026

OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, September 4 • 6PM - 8PM

Paradigm Gallery + Studio is pleased to present Tending to Clouds, a fiber arts exhibition featuring the work of Catalina Escallón Rosselli, Richie Wilde López, and Margaux McAllister, curated by Jessica Aguilar. Celebrating the expansive medium of hand-crafted textiles, Aguilar brings together three artists who transform simple materials like thread, wool, and banana leaves into dreamscape compositions, grand ensembles, and embellished tapestries. Each artist engages in a personal definition of ritual while embracing repetitions in everyday tasks: tending to gardens, sustaining a home, and, of course, art-making. Each artist follows while not knowing the final results, but maintaining a strong belief in the possibilities. Embroidery artist Catalina Escallón Rosselli builds abstract colorscapes with her delicate threadwork on paper and photographs, evoking soft, beaded veils floating in space. Weaver Richie Wilde López arranges tree fibers, wool, and natural dyes to tell impactful stories in their texture and layering. Tufter Margaux McAllister adorns spiritual symbols on her ceremonial masks, veiling ethereal beings that preside over fantastical plant forms. Each of these transformations requires time and purposeful labor, a habit which these artists channel back into their art, driven by the urge to work basic material to the point of metamorphosis. Fiber is an inherently relational medium, as we all have reference points for textiles in the home: blankets, kitchen towels, upholstery; all the softer places against the hard doors and walls. In the fog of our busy lives, these artists have found meditation and convalescence through fiberwork. As they encourage the material into new form, they demonstrate the impact of slow and meaningful craft in this contemporary landscape. Tending to Clouds will be on view on the first floor at Paradigm Gallery + Studio from September 4 through September 27, 2026, with a public opening reception on Friday, September 4, during Old City’s First Fridays.

Catalina Escallón Rosselli   

Catalina Escallón Rosselli, Neptune, 2025; plastic sequins, beads, cotton thread, acrylic on paper

Catalina Escallón Rosselli is a Colombian artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Drawing on her background in graphic design and textiles, she creates embroidered works on paper that explore dimension, light, and materiality. Through intricate hand-stitching, sequins, and beads, she transforms flat surfaces into tactile compositions that blur the boundaries of the graphic, the textile, and the dimensional.

She invites viewers to step closer—to observe the details, to trace the rhythm of each stitch, and to appreciate the deliberate pace of these techniques. Her work explores and embraces slow and precise processes, a reminder of the time and craftsmanship embedded. She also incorporates sequins and plastic beads, materials that allow her pieces to interact with light. These reflective elements shift in color and intensity depending on the angle, adding a dynamic luminosity that brings another dimension to her work.

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Richie Wilde López

Richie Wilde López, Maravilla, 2023; Handwoven Jute, Ramie, Linen Paper, Marigold-Dyed Wool on Cotton Canvas 

Richie Wilde López is a queer Puerto Rican textile artist based in Philadelphia. Self-taught, his practice has developed through sustained studio experimentation, personal research, and material inquiry rather than traditional academic training.

Working primarily through weaving and embroidery, López investigates how textiles hold memory, lived experience, and the passage of time. His work considers preservation as a way of understanding how history, family, and cultural experience continue to exist within the present. The home, domestic labor, and the influence of the women who shaped his life remain recurring points of reference, embedded within both material and process.

Increasingly, López is interested in moving beyond memory alone toward presence. Rather than looking only at what has already been lived, his work asks what it means to remain with an experience as it is happening. He explores how making can become a form of sustained attention, allowing emotion, perception, and bodily experience to exist without immediate resolution.

Alongside his studio practice, López develops and facilitates textile-based workshops and community programs that center accessible making and collective engagement with textile traditions.

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Margaux McAllister 

Margaux McAllister, Faux Flowers Mask; tufted acrylic yarn, embroidery floss, armature wire, felt

Margaux McAllister is a multidisciplinary artist with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BFA from Moore College of Art and Design. She has exhibited at Philadelphia’s Magic Garden, as well as in solo and group exhibitions in the Philadelphia area and across the country. Her work has been featured in the Art Delivery email from The Jealous Curator, on the cover of PXV ART MAG, and in multiple The Arts To Hearts Project books. She lives and works in Phoenixville, PA, where her work explores identity, transcendence, and the emotional spaces we inhabit. Working across rug tufting, embroidery, beading, installation, oil painting, and drawing, Margaux questions our understanding of the self and our relationship to the broader, universal human experience.

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About Paradigm Gallery + Studio
Paradigm Gallery + Studio® was established in 2010 by co-founders and curators Jason Chen and Sara McCorriston. The gallery exhibits meaningful, process-intensive contemporary artwork by emerging and mid-career artists from around the world, with a focus on Philadelphia. In 2023, Paradigm moved locations and opened its new 5-story, 7,000 sq. ft. home, The Paradigm Arts Building, in Old City, Philadelphia. Open to the public, the building boasts multiple floors of exhibition space, integrated in-house design and printmaking, a dedicated events floor, and art advisory offices. With this, Chen and McCorriston expanded their vision for the greater Philadelphia arts community. The gallery is at the heart of this vision, anchoring Paradigm’s overall mission of increasing access to the commercial art world, supporting artists and advancing their careers, and collaborating with like-minded partners to build a more equitable, sustainable arts economy for all.

EXHIBITION HOURS
Thursdays • 10 AM – 6 PM
Fridays • 10 AM – 6 PM
Saturdays • 11 AM – 6 PM
Sundays • 11 AM – 5 PM
Mon-Wed by appointment.

MEDIA CONTACT
For all inquiries, contact info@paradigm-gallery.com

LOCATION
12 N. 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram: @ParadigmGS