Alumni Gallery: Laura Petrovich-Cheney '11

Homecoming presents a body of wall-based sculptures by Laura Petrovich-Cheney ‘11, on view in the Alumni Gallery May 16 – July 18, 2026. Working with salvaged architectural wood—siding, cabinet doors and floorboards—Petrovich-Cheney cuts and reassembles these materials into compositions that draw from the logic of quilt-making, translating pattern, repetition and structure through woodworking. The work is materially driven: warped, split and weathered fragments retain their original surfaces, with chipped paint, nail holes and signs of prior use left visible. Rather than imposing control, she works in response to the inherent instability of salvaged wood, allowing resistance, weight and variation to shape each piece.

Join us for the opening reception on Friday, June 12 from 5 - 7 p.m., held in conjunction with the opening of the 2026 Juried Alumni Biennial.

About the Artist

Laura Petrovich-Cheney ’11 is a visual artist whose work combines sculpture, woodworking and textiles to reflect on how personal and collective lives are upended—and renewed—by disruption. While climate change often serves as a catalyst in her work, she is equally interested in the healing, resilience and sense of regeneration that can emerge in its aftermath. Drawing on the lineage of women’s practices such as quilting, weaving and needlework, she creates sculptural forms that invite dialogue between the domestic and the environmental. Her work challenges conventional boundaries between craft and fine art, while also examining how gendered associations with materials—wood as masculine, textiles as feminine—shape our understanding of artistic labor and value. Using salvaged wood and discarded remnants, Petrovich-Cheney transforms the cast-off into constructions that hold stories of memory, identity and recovery.