With more than15 years of experience, Victoria Manganiello and Nicole Yi Messier founded Craftwork in 2022.
Their backgrounds span art, architecture, academia, design, engineering, museums, research, technology and science. Combining historical fascination with forward-looking materiality, their skills in traditional textile crafts with emerging technologies bring together large-scale, dynamic projects with a variety of partners and contributors.
Nicole Yi Messier
Nicole Yi Messier, co-founder of Craftwork, is a creative technologist, designer, and artist with a focus on storytelling, community, and installations. She creates expressive, soft, and tangible technological interfaces through digital mediums and experimental craft techniques. With an unconventional creative technology practice that spans commercial and cultural sectors, Messier is a creative with a passion for constructing beautifully orchestrated objects and designs at the core of her experiences. She has worked in the interactive experiential space helping create large-scale, multi-year installations for both commercial and cultural clients. Her work has been shown and exhibited internationally.
Victoria Manganiello
Victoria Manganiello, co-founder of Craftwork, is an artist, designer, organizer, and educator. Victoria has received multiple international, recognized grants, awards, commissions, and residency appointments. Her artwork is included in private and institutional art collections around the globe and she has exhibited across the USA and Europe as well as South Korea and Australia. With more than 10 years of experience in academia, she holds various adjunct professor positions in New York and has been a visiting lecturer and critic at numerous prestigious universities around the world. Victoria is a board member for “Intertwine Arts” which serves people with disabilities and chronic illness through arts therapy. She is well-known in the craft community as an accomplished artist and innovative storyteller and facilitates many socially engaged projects in collaboration with other artists, designers and educators.
Victoria and Nicole are both part of the organizer team of electronic textile camp and teach at Parsons School of Design, New York University, and The Cooper Union.
Selected Engagements & Exhibitions
2026
Soft Speakers Workshop Index Space, New York, NY
Soft Friction The Blanc, New York, NY
“Soft Friction” Artechive(Press)
Woven Pixel San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, San Jose, CA
Digital Weaving Residency Praxis Fiber Workshop, Cleveland, OH
“The Domestic Machine: A History of Knitting Machines & The Community's Open-Source Hardware Ethos” Open Hardware Summit, Berlin, Germany (Conference Talk)
“The Domestic Machine: A History of Knitting Machines & The Community's Open-Source Hardware Ethos” ITP Camp, NYU, New York, NY (Artist Talk)
Artist Talk University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Issue 006 Clearline Magazine (Publication)
2025
Signal to Noise National Communication Museum, Melbourne, AUS
Radiant Fibers Clive Davis Museum, Brooklyn, NY
WIP Artist Residency, Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY
Soft Speaker Workshop, Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY
“Tactile Narratives: Reimagining Textile Heritage Through Electronic Craft and Collective Storytelling” Digital Heritage Conference, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Conference Talk)
TaDA Together, Saurer, Arbon, CH
“Technology Meets Fashion: Weaving Innovation into New York's Style Future” New York State Innovation Summit, New York, NY (Conference Talk)
Members in the Studio Brooklyn Museum
Textiles and Tea Handweavers Guild of America (Artist Talk)
Artist Talk Haystack Labs, Deer Isle, ME
Rejects Exhibition & Live Auction, CultureHub, NY, NY
Artist Talk University of Washington / DX Soft Lab, Seattle, WA
Artist Lecture Series Catskill Weaving School, Catskill, NY
2024
“Watching the Future Hatch” New York Times (Press)
Inherit, Yield, Regenerate WSA / New Museum, New York, NY
DEMO WSA / New Museum, New York, NY (Artist Talk)
Ancient Futures Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York, NY
Soft Speakers Workshop MoMA, New York, NY
Artist Talk Natalie and James Thompson Gallery, San José State University, San José, CA
That Feels Good: Obsession as Pleasure, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
Artist Talk University of California, Berkeley, CA
Soft Speakers Workshop Index Space, New York, NY
E-textiles Workshop Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME
Computational Inks Workshop Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME
Artist Talk Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME
Open Source Arts Contributors Conference, Denver, CO
Artist Talk, Unstable Design Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
2023
Re-Fest LaMama Galleria, New York, NY
Re-Fest, Hot Shot Muffler LA, Los Angeles, CA
Cellular Automata ATW, Melbourne, AUS
The Domestic Machine Prairie Ronde Gallery Vicksburg, MI
New Inc. New Museum, New York, NY (Fellowship)
La Hora DEED Research Lab, Parsons, New York, NY (Artist Talk)
Ancient Futures Middle Ear Project (Music for Your Inbox) LA, Los Angeles, CA
“Renewing Traditions: Exploring Nature, Culture, Science, and Textiles” Culture Hub Re-Fest, New York, NY (Conference Talk)
“Ancient Futures” Civic Art Lab ( (Conference Talk)
2022
Material Technology ATW, Melbourne, AUS
Ancient Futures Prairie Ronde Gallery, Vicksburg, MI
Ancient Futures Culture Hub, New York, NY
Weaving with Fiber Optics Workshop Culture Hub, NY, NY
Incantatio Mundi New European Bauhaus, Iași, Romania