Maryangela Sanchez Rocca at Krasl Art Center

In the Project Space:

Maryangela Sanchez Rocca

May 16 – August 9, 2026

Preview Party: May 15, 6 – 8 PM

Designer and artist Maryangela Sanchez Rocca transforms overlooked materials into sculptural furniture and domestic objects, exploring care, ritual, and collective labor. Her latest exhibition in Project Space highlights the fiber ixtle, drawn from the lechuguilla plant in northern Mexico, and its connections to agricultural labor, Indigenous practices, and systems of making.

Sanchez Rocca focuses on ixtle (EESH-tleh), a fiber extracted from the lechuguilla plant, native to northern Mexico. Historically used for brushes, ropes, sacks, and baskets, ixtle is closely tied to agricultural labor, land stewardship, and resistance within ejido farming communities. Drawing from knowledge shared by farmworkers in Coahuila, Mexico, Sanchez Rocca traces the material’s significance across Indigenous cultivation practices, colonial economies, and contemporary labor systems.



Through sculptural furniture, screens, and immersive installations made from raw ixtle and Douglas fir, Sanchez Rocca transforms utilitarian tools such as brooms and brushes into forms that resist usefulness. The works challenge assumptions about labor, value, and beauty while honoring the many hands that shape materials. In Project Space, the exhibition becomes an environment for reflection, rest, and quiet power.

For more information regarding the exhibitions, visit www.krasl.org.

EXHIBITION SPONSORS: Boulevard Inn & Bistro, 98.3 The Coast, Silver Beach Pizza, The John Devries Insurance Agency, Sven Erickson and Christopher Florian, and Visit Southwest Michigan

About Krasl Art Center:

Krasl Art Center provides southwest Michigan residents and visitors the opportunity to experience contemporary art exhibitions, new artist projects, and creative events, as well as art classes, camps, guest artist workshops, and community-wide programs. The center opened in 1980. Indoors, it houses galleries, art-making studios, and a gift shop. Outdoors it celebrates public art through sculpture placements on its campus and throughout the community. Krasl Art Center's mission is to inspire meaningful change and strengthen community through the visual arts. To learn more, visit krasl.org.