Josh Faught named Maria Manetti Shrem Endowed Chair in Art Studio

  • by Courtney Tompkins
Artist Josh Faught, wearing glasses and a striped button-down shirt, gestures while speaking with a student in a UC Davis sweatshirt who is working on a hand-woven textile project in a classroom setting with other students in the background.
Josh Faught works with Emilyn Canales ’26 in his undergraduate “Vagabond Weaving” course in fall 2025, when he was a visiting professor in The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies program at UC Davis. (Courtesy of UC Regents)

Acclaimed fiber artist and 2025 Guggenheim Fellow Josh Faught has been appointed to the Maria Manetti Shrem Endowed Chair in the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program at the University of California, Davis.

Working primarily with textiles through techniques such as weaving and knitting, Faught draws on broader social and political histories, as well as his own experiences. He describes his process as “collaging and conflating” those influences, examining the relationships among them and considering where queer bodies exist within that matrix.

He is particularly interested in resilience, queer joy and the complexities and contradictions of constructing an identity while being “pulled in multiple directions at one time.”

The Sacramento-based artist first came to UC Davis in fall 2025 as a visiting professor in The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies, where he taught ART 113: Vagabond Weaving, a course in which students built their own looms to experiment with weaving techniques.

“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to come back and continue working with the inspiring students and faculty at UC Davis, while also having the support to take big risks creatively,” Faught said.

Faught’s appointment is one of three endowed faculty chairs created through a commitment of more than $20 million from philanthropist and art patron Maria Manetti Shrem — the largest gift to the College of Letters and Science and the largest to the arts in UC Davis history. The gift funds eight endowments for arts and design and launched the Maria Manetti Shrem Arts Renaissance.

“Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Maria Manetti Shrem, UC Davis is emerging as a hub for textile arts and sustainable design,” said Estella Atekwana, dean of the College of Letters and Science. “The addition of Josh Faught, an exceptionally accomplished multimedia fiber artist, builds upon our legacy of excellence in the arts and reflects our commitment to providing transformative opportunities for students drawn to this dynamic and evolving field.”

An artist working across histories

Darrin Martin, professor and co-chair of the Department of Art and Art History, saw students’ enthusiasm firsthand during Faught’s 2025 residency, when they gravitated to the opportunity to work with textiles and fiber arts.

“Josh brings this incredible depth of knowledge in textiles, but he’s not limited by the medium,” said Martin, who also serves as chair of the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program. “His work moves in so many different directions, and he’s already proven to be a very generous teacher and artist.”

During his residency, Faught found an unexpected source of inspiration in the Queer Flower Garden at the UC Davis Student Farm. He took students there to experiment with plants as natural dyes. At the time, he was working on his own series of hand-knit sweaters inspired by flowers and queer symbolism.

“I’d never experienced teaching in such an enchanting location,” Faught said. “It just felt like kismet. I knew I needed to be here.”

Faught sees the very process of making textiles as part of their expressive power.

“I think about textiles as a way of speaking,” he said. “They grant you this ability to say something urgently through the slowest means possible.”

That approach can be seen in Sanctuary (2017), a 45-foot-tall, hand-woven tapestry exploring queer histories, safety and belonging. In Eternal Flame (2022), he brings together woven fibers, imagery from a late-1980s AIDS vigil in San Francisco, flowers, video and objects from popular culture in a single installation.

A long, colorful woven textile banner wrapped vertically around a tall white column inside a cathedral, transitioning from warm orange and red tones at the top to cool blues and grays at the bottom.
Josh Faught’s Sanctuary (2017), a hand-woven, hand-dyed work made with cotton, hemp, gold lamé and found and archival materials, was originally commissioned for Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and is now part of the Henry Art Gallery’s permanent collection.
(Courtesy of Josh Faught)

Faught earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiber and material studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and previously served as professor and chair of the Textiles Program at California College of the Arts. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions including Josh Faught at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle in 2025 and Look Across the Water into the Darkness, Look for the Fog at the Wattis Institute in San Francisco in 2022.

Expanding opportunities at UC Davis

A portrait of artist Josh Faught wearing glasses, a green-and-white striped button-up shirt, and a patterned sweater vest with floral motifs, standing indoors in front of hanging textile artwork.

In his first year at UC Davis, he will teach courses on sculpture and professional practices. He plans to bring vagabond weaving back in the spring.

Longer term, Faught hopes to expand the textiles curriculum and strengthen connections with design, where many students already take courses. That includes introducing Jacquard weaving, which transforms digital images into woven works and brings together technology and making by hand.

An artist and educator for the past 20 years, Faught sees the two identities as interwoven.

“Teaching keeps me humble, but it also keeps me relevant,” he said. “I’m constantly adapting and evolving my teaching practice as well as my studio practice to the conversations that are happening in my classroom.”