With Every Fiber | Long-Term Exhibition

About The Exhibit

Hannah Rose Thomas, PhD, on Nasreen (2025)

Resources | Visit Grace Farms | Exhibit Archive

Sharon Prince, Grace Farms CEO and Founder

First the food industry was called to be accountable to fair labor and supply chain transparency, then fashion, and now shelter is being called into account.

With Every Fiber: Pigment, Stone, Glass

designed by Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design, with Pentagram

curated by Grace Farms Creative Director Chelsea Thatcher

on view, Grace Farms West Barn

With Every Fiber: Pigment, Stone, Glass demonstrates innovative approaches to ethical sourcing and proves that fair labor practices in the construction industry are within our reach. This installation focuses on three at-risk materials: stone, pigment, and glass.

The stories of these materials are told through a number of newly commissioned artworks, on view in the exhibit: a portrait of Nasreen Sheikh, painted by artist Hannah Rose Thomas, PhD; a painting by artist and professor, John Sabraw, using pigments made in his studio from recycled mine drain off in the Ohio mountains; a new glass installation by Nina Cooke John, Principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture and Design and designer of With Every Fiber; and a sustainable prototype for stone truss work demonstrating engineering solutions, designed by Steve Webb, of Webb/Yates, and fabricated by the Stone Masonry Company.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra, which has a long partnership with Grace Farms, recorded Woven in Tears, composed by Evan Williams.

Featured reading:
Download a PDF copy of With Every Word, a digital version of the 2025/2026 Special Edition newspaper developed for the exhibit.

Hannah Rose Thomas, PhD, on Nasreen

Hannah Rose Thomas
Nasreen, 2025
on view in the With Every Fiber exhibit

Egg tempera/oil on MDF panel
5’8″h x 4’w

Nasreen is a portrait painting of Nasreen Sheikh, modern slavery survivor, human rights activist, artist, and Founder of The Empowerment Collective by Hannah Rose Thomas, PhD. Nasreen was created using egg tempera paint mixed from natural pigments — a technique traditionally used for religious art. Thomas’s use of iconography and early Renaissance painting techniques and gold leaf for portrait paintings is symbolic of the restoration of dignity and the sacred value of each individual.

Design for Freedom Resources

Visit Grace Farms

With Every Fiber: Pigment, Stone, Glass is on view at Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut. Grace Farms is open to the public six days a week. Admission is free.

Exhibit Archive

With Every Fiber (2024-2025)

May 2024 – February 2025

Where do our building materials come from and are they made with fair labor?

The first iteration of this immersive and interactive exhibit was curated by Grace Farms Creative Director Chelsea Thatcher and designed by Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design, with graphics designed by Pentagram. It was the result of collaboration and contributions from 20 preeminent designers, material suppliers, cultural institutions, and construction industry leaders already committed to the Design for Freedom movement. 

With Every Fiber featured a curated recording by a quartet of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, poetry by U.S. Poet LaureateJoy Harjo, text by artist Carrie Mae Weems, and photography by international humanitarian photographer Lisa Kristine. It also featured an immersive biomaterials installation by Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA) emphasizing the relationship between culture and sustainability and bringing forth the concept of ethical decarbonization, a new term proposed by Grace Farms CEO and Founder Sharon Prince with Anna Dyson, founder of Yale CEA.

Nina Cooke John

With Every Fiber responds to Design for Freedom’s efforts to remove the veil covering the reality of unethical labor practices in the construction industry. The exhibit draws Grace Farms visitors – neighbors from across the street and design professionals from around the world – into the space and invites them to contemplate what goes into making our homes, places of work, cultural spaces, and sites for commemoration.

About Nina Cooke John

Principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design

Nina Cooke John, Principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design, was one of the first architects in the U.S. to commit to embarking on a Design for Freedom Pilot Project. She tracked materials for fair labor in Shadow of a Face, a public monument celebrating the life of Harriet Tubman and supported by the city of Newark, NJ. See the concrete cast of Tubman’s eye, used in the creation of the monument, in the exhibit.

Studio Cooke John is a multidisciplinary design studio valuing placemaking as a way to transform relationships between people and the environment. 

Nina Cooke John’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Dwell, NBC’s Open House, the Center for Architecture’s 2018 exhibition, Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, and PBS NewsHour Weekend.