April Camlin (b. 1983, Baltimore, MD) is a textile artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose practice engages with the body’s deep knowledge and capacity for transformation. Her work interlaces the complexities of chronic illness, memory, and healing, expanding the traditions of weaving beyond their conventional boundaries while honoring the rich lineages of the craft . By subverting traditional weaving techniques and integrating salvaged materials, ceramics, and plant-dyed fibers, Camlin creates sculptural forms that honor cycles of death and rebirth. Her practice extends beyond the loom into communal public rituals and bedside singing, offering spaces for grief, connection, and renewal.
Camlin’s work explores the interwoven relationships between the body, time, and materiality, using textiles as a conduit for both personal and collective narratives. Rooted in an intuitive and improvisational approach to making, her practice reflects the physical and emotional imprints of disability, tracing the ways trauma, resilience, and transformation manifest in fiber and form. She constructs her own looms from salvaged lumber, creating systems that can hold the weight of embodied experience while resisting rigid structures of control. Twisting yarn into thick, rope-like strands dyed with plant matter, she emphasizes the alchemical nature of her process—one that embraces imperfection, decomposition, and regeneration. By incorporating found objects, ceramics, and performative elements, Camlin activates her work as both personal artifact and communal offering, engaging with cycles of loss, renewal, and the unseen forces that shape human existence.
Camlin's work has been exhibited at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, the Manetti Shrem Museum, SPRING/BREAK, and TSA Miami SATELLITE Art Fair. Her work is held in the collections of the Manetti Shrem Museum and the Elsewhere Museum. She is currently in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts as a Graduate Fellow. She has participated in numerous residencies, including Ox-Bow, the Elsewhere Museum, Penland, and Haystack. While attending the Art Studio MFA program at UC Davis she received the prestigious Provost Fellowship, the Drake Fellowship, and the Fay Nelson and Mary Lou Osborn Awards, was a finalist for the Daedalus Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and was awarded the LeShelle and Gary May Purchase Prize. She has facilitated workshops and rituals at the Davis Cemetery and Arboretum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walter's Art Museum, and many community spaces such as the Station North Tool Library and A Workshop of Our Own.