Self-taught artists were invited to exhibit, and sell, their fuzzy stacks of pancakes and tasseled tapestries.

by Renée Reizman, January 27, 2022

LOS ANGELES — At the Pandemic Folk Art Museum, the bright gallery is filled with colorful, hand-made rugs.

There are wooly yellow squiggles popping off gray backgrounds and a reptilian clown, patchworked prints and an anxiety-ridden dog. Some rugs have wobbly lines that bleed out of their otherwise rectangular canvas, others embed mirrors into their plush surface.

Aelfie used to be textile designer Aelfie Oudghiri’s showroom, but she transformed it into the Pandemic Folk Art Museum to showcase the resurgence of craft that emerged during the coronavirus pandemic. The inaugural show, Tufted Rugs, was inspired by a TikTok trend that demonstrated how you could draw freely with a tufting gun while simultaneously creating sturdy, practical rugs.

Almost none of the artists in the show had made a rug before they discovered the craft on TikTok.

Source: New Folk Art Museum Celebrates the Rise of Craft During the Pandemic