Grace Farms to Unveil Next Edition of Long-Term Exhibit Exploring Ethical Sourcing in the Building Materials Supply Chain
With Every Fiber | Pigment, Stone, Glass on View Beginning October 11, 2025 Features Five New Art Commissions
Press Preview: Saturday, October 11, 2025
Lithologic, by John Sabraw, is one of five new pieces featured in With Every Fiber (courtesy of John Sabraw)
This fall, Grace Farms will present a new installation of the long-term exhibit With Every Fiber | Pigment, Stone, Glass which shines a spotlight on the Design for Freedom movement—founded in 2020 by Grace Farms Founder and CEO Sharon Prince—to elevate human rights and eliminate forced and child labor in the built environment. The new installation reveals the embodied suffering behind pigment, glass, and stone in the construction industry as well as new innovations within those materials that demonstrate that building ethically is possible. The exhibit features five new commissions responding to the Design for Freedom movement. The free exhibit will open on October 11, 2025.
New to the exhibit are commissioned works by John Sabraw, artist and professor at Ohio University; Nina Cooke John, principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture & Design and designer of With Every Fiber; and artist Hannah Rose Thomas, PhD., who will be unveiling a life-size portrait of social entrepreneur Nasreen Sheikh. Webb Yates Engineers’ sustainable prototype for truss work will demonstrate an engineering solution that replaces unethically sourced carbon-producing steel with stone. The London Philharmonic Orchestra, which has a long partnership with Grace Farms recorded Woven in Tears, composed by Evan Wiliams, which will be featured in the exhibit.
“As we celebrate our tenth anniversary season, we are thrilled to unveil the next edition of the With Every Fiber exhibit,” said Sharon Prince, CEO and Founder of Grace Farms. “Through the lens of design and the contributions of artists, architects, and musicians, we hope visitors will gain the knowledge and inspiration to make more conscious decisions to design and build in a way that elevates human rights and honors dignity over exploitation.”
“With Every Fiber highlights how creative vision has the power to transform our built environment,” said Chelsea Thatcher, Grace Farms’ Chief Strategic Officer, Founding Creative Director, and curator of the exhibit. “The artists and creators featured here have reimagined how we work with stone, pigment, and glass. They demonstrate innovative approaches to ethical sourcing and prove that fair labor practices in the construction industry are within our reach.”
Artist and environmentalist John Sabraw’s mixed media work, Lithologic (2024) is composed of iron oxide pigments derived from the remediation of acid mine drainage pollution near Truetown, Ohio, as well as Appalachian coal. The work explores the topographies created from human extraction of natural resources and their paradox, which Sabraw sees as feats of human ingenuity and engineering, and emblematic of human consumption. These topographies form a hidden network most people have no idea exist, but each and every one of us plays a part in.
A stone pylon by Steve Webb, similar the one in With Every Fiber, shown here at the Royal Academy (courtesy of Webb Yates)
Also new to the exhibit is a Stone Space Frame pylon designed by Webb Yates Engineers, who has been developing sustainable engineering solutions in the building industry for decades. The pylon is an example of how post-tensioned stone, which when quarried, processed, transported, and reused under the right conditions, is a highly sustainable material, and might replace steel as a trussing component. The pylon features bars made up of four types of stone connected by thin steel rods: reclaimed stone, Jodhpur Sandstone, Vietnamese Stone (Pleiku Black), and Angolan Black Stone. Each stone was selected because of its potential for ethical sourcing. This pylon technology, which could reduce the steel and carbon used in construction by 75%, can be applied to many projects, such as bridges, roofs, factories, stadiums, and buildings. This is the first U.S. commission of Stone Space Frame.
Exhibit designer Nina Cooke John has contributed a new glass installation exploring the meanings of found materials, compiled and layered through the art of collage. Through dense layering of strips of reused glass that graduate to areas of sparing use, the work gives a new way of looking at glass as a product, prompting questions about how the construction industry is designing and sourcing this material. By incorporating recognizable historic glass windows and door frames, the work grounds itself in the lived spaces of daily life while raising awareness about forced labor and child labor in the global glass and sand industries.
Artist and human rights activist Hannah Rose Thomas’s life-size portrait of social entrepreneur and modern slavery survivor Nasreen Sheikh was created with tempera from natural pigments. Thomas’s work has been exhibited at the UK Houses of Parliament, European Parliament, and Westminster Abbey.
A frequent collaborator with Grace Farms, The London Philharmonic has recorded a new composition for the exhibit by composer and conductor Evan Williams, which responds to Hannah Rose Thomas’s portrait of Nasreen Sheikh. Woven in Tears incorporates different instrument sounds and melody lengths to represent individual threads creating a tapestry. The piece features glisses, plucking, and other techniques from the string players and pianist to evoke sounds similar to the fibers of strings threading each other. Tapping gestures are used to create the mechanical noise that would be heard in a sweatshop. The piece later transforms to evoke the peaceful sounds of the 100-year-old loom that Sheikh acquired for her first business, using her skills and sustainable practices to empower herself and other women in her region. The 18-minute piece will be played in the exhibit throughout the show’s run.
With Every Fiber incorporates Design for Freedom’s principles into its design, including prioritizing circularity. The exhibit itself became a site for research and the development of new methods of exhibit design and material tracking. The new installation of the exhibit repurposes materials throughout.
A portion of With Every Fiber was adapted and included in the Intelligens CANON at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Carlo Ratti, on view through November 2025.
With Every Fiber and Peace Forest are Grace Farms’ two long-term exhibitions. Peace Forest will also be refreshed this fall to feature new watermedia works by Heather Jones, on view beginning October 11.
Support
Anahata Foundation
Assa Abloy
Buro Happold
Design Within Reach
Hayes Davidson
Nucor
Sciame
Sherwin-Williams
Studio Cooke John
