Cultural Patchworks: A New Folk Art
Worcester Center for Crafts
Worcester, Massachusetts
August 19–October 8, 2026
The wall hangings in this show include pieces from North, Central, and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific that were stitched together into artworks that demonstrate how textile traditions from different parts of the world can coexist in beauty and harmony.
Artist and curator Paula Gulbicki has used textiles, garments and accessories that she has collected for more than 50 years to create the wall hangings. Each one blends together two or more cultures in a variety of compositions. She started her collection for a Cultural Aspects of Clothing course that she taught at Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Massachusetts.
There is a Native American phrase, “We are all related,” that reflects a view of the underlying connectedness of everyone and everything in our natural world. These cultural patchworks symbolize the artist’s belief in a link among people from different backgrounds, ideologies and religions. They bring together an appreciation of the traditions and cultural heritage of diverse peoples from all over the world.
Paula is a native of Worcester, and her interest in cultural textiles and costumes started at an early age, when she found traditionally dressed plastic figurines in her Van Brode breakfast cereal that piqued her curiosity about the world around her. A collection of those international dancers is included in the exhibit. While a student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, her historic costume class met weekly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Each week curators displayed ethnic costumes and accessories from around the world for the students to sketch, and to examine construction and embellishment techniques. After graduating from Pratt Institute, Ms. Gulbicki worked as a craft designer for several Manhattan-based magazines. She earned a master’s degree in museum studies at Framingham State University, and for 32 years, she headed the fashion program at Middlesex Community College.
