Dance Doyle is an Oakland-based artist. Born and bred there during the ’80s and ’90s. They witnessed a gritty beauty that emerged from the city after the crack epidemic had torn through it. It was the graffiti, culture, camp fashion, urban decay, and music that flowed through the streets connecting their community which has provided endless memories for them to pull on. All of Dance’s work has been informed by that beautiful, heavy environment.

Dance’s background was filled with years of ceramic sculpture and hand-building. When Dance was attending San Francisco State University in 2005, they took a textiles class and learned how to dress a loom After college, Dance became self-taught at the woven tapestry and envisioned it as a better way to paint, one that had structure, and visual poetry. With those structures, hand-dyed colors, and textures of tapestry, they were then able to have full control over the images and atmosphere in their work. Dance’s tapestries look similar to their drawings, pulling all designs from their crowded head. Dance has never used a cartoon to aid their process because they were never taught to use one. Dance just draws a tiny picture, pins it to the castle of their loom, and figures the rest out.

Through years of self-taught trials, errors, and taking risks, Dance grew as a contemporary artist and developed its own technique and style. Their primary focus has been telling contemporary narratives, based not only on their own stories but ones told to them, that reflect, piece by piece, examples of our human condition in these overpopulated urban environments.

From 2018 to 2020, Dance finished three artist-in-resident programs at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE. Dance is serving as vice president of Tapestry Weavers West, and is a member of the American Tapestry Alliance, and the Textile Arts Council at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, CA. Their work has been shown at the Legion of Honor Museum, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. In 2020, they were published in Textile Fibre Forum Magazine, the American Tapestry Alliance's CODA Magazine. In 2020, their work was featured twice in Fiber Art Now Magazine.

In 2021, Dance was published in Untitled Magazine's Innovate issue and was a Chenven Foundation Grant recipient. Then in 2022, Dance was nominated for the Outstanding Student Award, granted by the Surface Design Association, and was awarded the 2022 All-College Honors Scholarship from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Lastly, Dance was awarded both the Jack K. & Gertrude Murphy and Edwin Anthony & Adaline Boudreaux Cadogan and Barclay Simpson Awards for the 2022-2023 year.

Currently, Dance is prepping for a November 2022 show at Minnesota Street Projects in San Francisco, CA.

EDUCATION

MFA Candidate, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Class of 2023

Artist In Resident (curriculum-based residency) Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY. 2019. 9 months.

Tapestry Intensive with Mary Zicafoose, Penland School of Crafts, North Carolina. 2015. 2 weeks.

BFA, Textiles, San Francisco State University, SF, CA. 2010. 4 years.

Associate's Degree, Liberal Arts, City College of San Francisco, SF, CA. 2 years.

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