River Forest Berry is an artist, educator, and curator. She works with fiber processes, installation, and performance. Berry graduated from the Columbus College of Art & Design in 2021 with her BFA in the History of Art & Visual Culture and will receive her MFA from the University of Michigan in 2026. She recently curated Softer, an exhibition of four emerging, midwestern craft artists at 934 Gallery in Columbus, Ohio. Her own work has been exhibited nationally in spaces such as ROY G BIV Gallery, Albrecht-Kemper Museum, and West Virginia University, and is currently supported by the Greater Columbus Arts Council.
Berry explores memory, material, and place through quilts and family photographs. Rooted in both traditional and experimental fiber practices, it asks how memory is constructed, preserved, and transmitted across generations. For Berry, quilting is more than fabric stitched together; it is storytelling, an archival practice, and a vessel for lived experience.
Drawing on family traditions passed down from her Nana, who taught her to sew, Berry reinterprets quilting, lace, and weaving as ways of engaging with memory. She centers reuse through secondhand and natural materials, which carry embedded histories of labor and care. Performative gestures of ripping, cutting, pulling, and stitching further emphasize the physical effort and time that define fiber work. By combining craft with performance and installation, Berry positions quilts not only as carriers of the past but also as active sites of transformation, blurring the boundaries between memory, tradition, object and action, labor and care.
CV
Solo Exhibitions
2024 Solo Exhibition, Adamah Ceramics, Columbus, OH
2022 Tender, Acock Gallery, Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), Columbus, OH
2021 Family Gathering, Byers Gallery, CCAD, Columbus, OH
2019 Life Condensed, Up Front Artspace, Cuyahoga Falls, OH
Curatorial Projects
2025 Plush, 934 Gallery, Curated by River Berry, artists: Leela Waters, Jess Schwarz, River Berry, & Baylee Schmitt, Columbus OH
2024 Softer, Sean Christopher Gallery, Curated by River Berry, artists: Leela Waters, Jess Schwarz, River Berry, & Baylee Schmitt, Columbus, OH
Professional Experience
2025- Curatorial Research Assistant (Photography), Jennifer Friess, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
2025- Graduate Student Staff Assistant, Jacquard Weaving Library Assistant, Kit Parks, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
2025- Installation Assistant, University of Michigan - Stamps Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI
2025 Studio and Archive Assistant, Prof. David Chung, University of Michigan - Stamps Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI
2024 Graduate Student Instructor, Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (Integrative Projects, Fall-Winter)
2024 Creative Summer Workshops Instructor (CSW), Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH (Textile Design & Block Print, Fashion Accessories)
2023-24 Print Fellow, Columbus Printed Arts Center, Columbus, OH
2023 Studio Assistant, Clay Cafe, Columbus, OH (ceramics)
Education
2026 MFA Candidate, Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
2022 BFA with Distinction, History of Art & Visual Culture concentration in printmaking, Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), Columbus, OH
Awards, Grants, & Fellowships
2025 Fully Funded Scholarship, Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists' Residency, Saugatuck, MI
2025 MFA First-Year Exhibition Jury’s Distinction Award, Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
2025 Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia Summer Grants for Research and Internships, University of Michigan, Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, Ann Arbor, MI
2025 Smucker Wagstaff Grant recipient, Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
2023 Artist Funds Grant recipient, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Columbus, OH
2022 Windgate-Lamar Fellowship Nominee, Center for Craft, Asheville NC
Group Exhibitions & Community Projects
2025 Exuberant Resistance, Wavepool Gallery, curated by Erin Adelman, artists: Josie Love Roebuck, River Berry, & Colleen Merrill, Cincinnati, OH
2025-26 “A Common Thread”, Wayne Center for the Arts (Wooster, OH), Riffe Gallery (Columbus, OH), Carnegie Gallery (Columbus, OH), Ohio Craft Museum (Columbus, OH), Visions Gallery of Textile Art (San Diego, CA), Curated by Caren Petersen and Char Norman
2025 Warped Routes, 1st year MFA Exhibition, Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
2024 “Proximity of Fate”, Mansfield Art Center, Curated by Marquise Stillwell, Mansfield, OH
2024 “Art From the Heartland”, Indy Art Center, Indianapolis, IN
2024 “Heartland”, Dream Clinic Project Space, Curated by Rebecca Arp, Columbus, OH
2023 Between Us, ROY G BIV Gallery, with Isabel Zeng & Margaret Hull curated by Bryan Christopher Moss, Dana Lynn Harper, Julie Abijanac, Michael Goodson, & Sheri Neale, Columbus, OH
2022 Fragile Landscapes of the Body and Mind, ROY G BIV Gallery, curated by Erin Adelman, Columbus, OH
2022 Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art’s Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, Albrecht-Kemper Museum, St. Joseph, MO
2021 Rise and Pull, held by The Radical Intersectional Printmakers Guild, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV
Presentations & Publications
River Forest Berry, “A New Web 3.0: Transparency and Creative Solidarity” on the internet, everyone knows you’re a ____. Edited by Angela Washko, Ann Arbor MI, May 2025
Taylor Durell, “Stitches”, 614 Magazine, Columbus, OH, May 2023.
Cadmium Red, Art Collaboration and Interview with Bryn Reagan, Columbus, OH, August 18, 2023.
Cadmium Red Live Stream and interview, Columbus, OH, July 2023.
“Crafting Identity: Contemporary Crafts through Feminist Lenses” CCAD Chroma Art History Symposium, Columbus, OH, April 2022.
“Crafting Identity: Contemporary Crafts through Feminist Lenses”, Southern University of New York Undergraduate Art History Symposium, New Paltz, NY, March 2022.
River Berry, “Family Gathering”, BFA thesis publication, March 2022.
rforestberry@gmail.com
@r.forestberry