Born in 1949 in Sacramento, California, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood is a fiber artist known for her large wall installations and woven works. As a child, Jimenez Underwood worked alongside her parents as a migrant farm laborer. Her father, who was undocumented for many years, was deported several times throughout her childhood. Jimenez Underwood recalls traveling to Mexico with her mother to bring him home, sometimes only to see him apprehended again at the border. Themes of layered identity, borderlines, and interconnectedness have naturally found their way into Jimenez Underwood’s body of work. She began weaving while pursuing art at San Diego State University (BA 1981, MA 1985). After a brief stint focused on painting, Jimenez Underwood switched to textiles, which soon became her material of choice. While at San Diego State University, she gained technical fluency and became interested in declassifying art and craft. At San Jose State University (MFA 1987), she was pushed to focus on conceptual content. Jimenez Underwood embraced the shift, and began creating works using non-traditional materials such as wire, safety pins, and caution tape. These new materials helped her access personal and globally relevant themes that continue to reverberate throughout her body of work. She has mounted many solo exhibitions and is represented within the collections of museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC. In addition to her active studio practice, Jimenez Underwood has years of experience as an educator. She taught at San Jose State University for 20 years, serving as the head of their fiber/textile area from 1989 to 1996. She was also a 2014 Artist Laureate for Silicon Valley Creates and was featured in the 2012 “Threads” episode of Craft in America on PBS. Consuelo Jimenez Underwood was named an Emerging Talent by the American Craft Council in 1987, and she was elected a Fellow in 2018.