Ally Maurer is a Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist originally from Long Island, New York. She is pursuing earning her BFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is expected to graduate in Spring 2025. Her work explores the relationship between herself, her home, and the nature she is surrounded by. She strives to comfort to her audience through the care she puts into each work she creates.  Exploring different disciplines in her past is what brought Ally to currently work on large-scale quilts and soft sculpture installations.

My fiber-based wall works and soft sculptures are infused with my own autobiography. They speak broadly about the longing, loss, and nostalgia integral to growing up and moving away from home. Within my practice, I respond to my emotions and desire to foster safety and comfort through soft compositions. I strive for my audience to reflect on their own experience growing up.

I convey how I adjust to my growing pains using crocheting, embroidery, felting, and sewing. My grandma surrounded me with carefully crafted quilts and applique work, and she inspired me to continue the legacy of domestic, women-dominated crafts passed down within my family. I grew up in Long Island, New York, and never moved away from my family home. A consistent home base formed my desire for the home as a form of return.

Recurring symbols in my work include images of my childhood home and my late dog, Luke, as I have been grappling with the emotional and physical loss of both. A strategy I have employed is using objects that have interacted with the people and places I have lost. Luke’s hair was incorporated into a needle-felted recreation of him, and remnants of his dog bed and blanket were stitched into a quilt. I am trying to remember and grasp onto what is left of my past as I grow away and reassess my definition of home. I am continually exploring what it is like to achieve safety and comfort through the intimate act of sewing, piecing, quilting, and assembling my practice.