About Chloe

Carroll County

Chloe Irla grew up outside of Richmond, VA but moved around a lot as a teenager. She attended McDaniel College before receiving an MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited nationally and in Sofia, Bulgaria, Vancouver, BC, and Gimpo, Korea. Chloe has been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center and the Wassaic Project. As an educator, she has… more

The Hunter and the Hunted: Made to Measure

This chapter of my Blaze Breakers series began with an exploration of the semiotics of hunting textiles, particularly camouflage patterns. The somewhat moronic juxtaposition of invisibility (camouflage) and visibility (blaze orange) within hunting textiles is fascinating to me: the hunter must wear blaze orange to communicate their presence to other hunters (I’m not a bear.), yet also wear camouflage as a cloaking device to blend in with their surrounding landscape. “The hunter” and “the hunted” in these works can be interpreted metaphorically to communicate general themes such as in/visibility, dis/appearance, and honesty: camouflage is an illusion, a visible lie, so is blaze orange truthful?

The Hunter and The Hunted: Made to Measure presents a lexicon of essential elements and principles that establish the foundation of The Hunter and The Hunted series. The elements and principles of The Hunter and The Hunted are light, warmth, surface, measurement, visibility, organization, transformation, honesty, history, and time. Most of the projects included in the exhibition at McDaniel College were created specifically for the Rice Gallery and are grounded in both institutional and personal memories: I was a McDaniel College student from 2005–2007 and am currently a full-time faculty member. The space that is now the Rice Gallery served as the College’s library from 1909–1961, and for the duration of this exhibition, serves as a library for this body of work. I felt it important to present the building blocks of The Hunter and The Hunted series in an academic setting instilled with its own foundational elements: the seven liberal arts.

  • HH: Light
    HH: Light
    Installation view at McDaniel College, September 2018. The exhibition included a site-specific installation in the gallery windows made from Contact paper and cellophane.
  • Installation view at McDaniel College
    Installation view at McDaniel College
  • Lies Above / Lies Hier
    Lies Above / Lies Hier
    The placement of this work in the gallery references the stained glass window ceiling above. The ceiling is a replica of the original stained glass piece, which currently lives in Hoover Library’s Board Room. “Lies hier” in German, a language I studied for 5 years, translates to “Read here,” a reference to the Rice Gallery’s past use as the College’s library.
  • Cascading Warmth
    Cascading Warmth
    Cascading Warmth Mylar blankets 84 x 56 inches 2018
  • HH: Outfitter
    HH: Outfitter
    HH: Outfitter Canvas, embroidery, fishing lures 60 x 28 inches 2018
  • HH: Revelation
    HH: Revelation
    HH: Revelation Bleach on denim, cotton fringe, dyed canvas 2018
  • HH: Topography
    HH: Topography
    HH: Topography Wool, steel wool, chicken wire, birch wood, Astroturf, yarn 2018
  • Topography detail
    Topography detail
  • HH: Storage
    HH: Storage
    Sewn canvas with grommets, 2018
  • HH: Trophy Quilt
    HH: Trophy Quilt
    HH: Trophy Quilt Quilt composed of sewn camoflage and blaze orange hunting textile panels. 17 x 6 ft 2018

Pizza Party Twister

Pizza Party Twister occurred during the Field Day exhibition at Artscape 2014 in Baltimore, MD and has also been included in the group exhibition, "Subversive Play: Artists Challenging Mechanisms of Control," at Structura Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria.


The official Twister rules state that Twister is “the perfect fun starter for every party.” I agree with this statement but believe that playing Twister on a giant, delicious looking pizza is a more effective way of beginning what one hopes will be a fun, friendly gathering.

The object of the game is simple: to outmaneuver all other opponents in placing one’s hands and feet on different types of pizza toppings (mushrooms, pepperoni, basil, and olives) as directed by the spinner. Players may participate as individuals or as teams. If one person on a team falls or touches an elbow or a knee to the pizza surface, the entire team loses–this is serious pizza stuff. The referee will use a spinner to determine on which topping participants should place their hands or feet. Players must remove their shoes to participate. Whenever one player falls or allows an elbow or knee to touch the pizza, that player is out and the game continues until only one participant stands victorious. The winner is awarded a handmade ceramic golden pizza slice and is dubbed a Pizza Twisting Legend.

The set­-up of the game includes a large circular vinyl mat resembling a pizza that rests on top of Astroturf carpeting to give the game an authentic backyard feel. This is also known as the Pizzarena. Signage includes information about the game’s schedule.

Pizza Party Twister is a means of bringing out the competitive spirit of participants, allowing one to flex their yoga and Pilates muscles while simultaneously inducing the urge to satisfy a craving for hot, delicious pizza.

  • Installation view at Structura Gallery
    Installation view at Structura Gallery
  • Pizza Party Twister Spinner Animation
    30-second looping animation
  • Installation view at Structura Gallery
    Installation view at Structura Gallery
  • Pizza Party Twister at Artscape
    Pizza Party Twister at Artscape
  • Game in action at Artscape
    Game in action at Artscape
  • Game in action at Artscape
    Game in action at Artscape

Year One

From January 18, 2015 to January 18, 2016, I collected data about my daughter's first year of life and created digital, timeline-like drawings about her daily schedule. I tracked the times of each nursing session, pumping session, nightly sleep and morning wake-up, daytime nap, diaper, bath, bottle, and solid food acceptance. I began the project with hand-dyeing samples of wool, scanning the samples and adjusting them into digital files, and then arranging the “tiles” into blanket-like digital compositions.
  • Month 1
    Month 1
    Month 1
  • Weeks 1–4
    Weeks 1–4
    Weeks 1–4
  • Month 6
    Month 6
    Month 6
  • Months 1, 3, 6, 9, 12
    Months 1, 3, 6, 9, 12
    Months 1, 3, 6, 9, 12
  • Installation view at Montpelier Arts Center
    Installation view at Montpelier Arts Center
  • Installation view at Montpelier Arts Center
    Installation view at Montpelier Arts Center
  • Installation view at Rehoboth Art League
    Installation view at Rehoboth Art League
  • Installation view at Rehoboth Art League
    Installation view at Rehoboth Art League

Made in Maine

Work created while living in Farmington, ME, a rural community in central, western Maine.
  • Mountain Room
    Mountain Room
    Acrylic and gouache on panel; 10 x 10 inches
  • Blaze Houses
    Blaze Houses
    Acrylic and gouache on panel; 9 x 12 inches
  • The Four Seasons: True Timber Harvest, Real Tree Snow Color, True Timber Conceal Green, Meadow Grass Green
    The Four Seasons: True Timber Harvest, Real Tree Snow Color, True Timber Conceal Green, Meadow Grass Green
    Fabric, wood; 80 x 20 inches
  • Idyllic Landscape Unit
    Idyllic Landscape Unit
    Painted, sewn, and stuffed canvas; AstroTurf; photographic print on vinyl; hand-knit wool yarn; 60 x 90 x 65 inches
  • Idyllic Landscape Unit
    Idyllic Landscape Unit
    Painted, sewn, and stuffed canvas; AstroTurf; photographic print on vinyl; hand-knit wool yarn; 60 x 90 x 65 inches
  • Myth
    Myth
    Hand and needle-felted sheep and alpaca wool; Wire; Contact paper on cardboard; 45 x 13 x 42 inches
  • Downtime Rivers: 6 Weeks Until Spring
    Downtime Rivers: 6 Weeks Until Spring
    Hand-knit yarns; wooden dowel; 84 x 36 x 5 inches Downtime Rivers: 6 Weeks Until Spring is a project that began on Groundhog Day when Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring. Each river was knitted over a weeklong period during any downtime I had between teaching, grading, etc. The longer the river, the more cooped up I was during that week.
  • Inaugural Winter
    Inaugural Winter
    Detail
  • Inaugural Winter
    Inaugural Winter
    Hand-dyed and needle felted wool; 84 x 70 inches. Inaugural Winter: Selected Sunrise/Sunset Times, Nov.-March 2013 is a hand-sewn, needle-felted wool blanket that is a graph of data I collected on a blog (mainewinter.tumblr.com) throughout the season that tracked the time I noticed darkness, the color of the sky, and the outside temperature at that time. The length of each bar represents the amount of darkness during that particular day, with the shortest day having only about 8-9 hours of daylight in a 24-hour period.