Soft Armor
Greta Coalier

August 1 - September 20, 2025
Opening Reception August 1, 5-8pm

By reclaiming domestic materials, Greta Coalier transforms the quiet, often overlooked world of handwork into a vibrant dialogue about survival, defiance, and the unspoken experiences of women. Through textiles, color, and form, she maps internal landscapes and external pressures, revealing how we absorb, endure, and ultimately resist control.

About the Artist

Greta Coalier’s practice operates at the intersection of memory, material, and contemporary femininity. Her work—primarily painting and textile-based—embodies a quiet rigor: intuitive, honest, and deliberately constructed. Each piece is rooted in a politics of care—for the body, for history, and for the often-invisible labor carried by women. Without resorting to sentimentality, Coalier transforms domestic materials into vessels of protection, resilience, and resistance—building armor from thread, softness from structure, and presence from what is often overlooked.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Coalier grew up with access to public museums and libraries that nurtured her early fascination with both visual art and the natural world. She began sewing in childhood and developed an expansive studio practice integrating painting, handwork, and sculptural forms. Coalier received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. She currently lives and works in St. Louis, where her work continues to explore the aesthetics and politics of care, containment, and survival.

https://www.gretacoalier.com/
@gretacoalier

Events & exhibitions at the Foundry Art Centre are free and open to the public. For more information, please email Jessica Mannisi, Director of Exhibitions, at jmannisi@foundryartcentre.org