Madeline Herrera
Madeline Herrera is an interdisciplinary artist and arts professional based in the DFW metroplex. She received her M.F.A with a focus in printmaking from the University of North Texas in 2025, and is currently employed as the Assistant Registrar at The Rachofsky Collection. In addition, she is also a co-founder of By Candlelight Press, an artist-run collaborative creating handmade books and printed matter, last seen at the Dallas Art Book Fair 2026, SpeedBump Fort Worth, and the Shed Show Annual Backyard Art Market. Independently, Madeline continues to exhibit and has shown at
500X Gallery, Union Street Gallery, and Greater Denton Arts Council.
Artist Statement:
Through layered sculpture and found objects, my practice seeks to house the “other” and create amalgamated relics of personal narratives and ephemera. Drawing on childhood memories, oral histories, cultural lore, and familial dynamics, I investigate the role of tradition in shaping self-perception while containing remnants of what came before. My work is both an acknowledgement and an examination of the past's ability to shape current identity and the future. Through multidisciplinary practices in papermaking, printmaking, cast sculpture, and bookmaking, I prioritize handcrafted
objects and emphasize tactile connections between the work and its process. Primarily existing as paper cast sculptures, the work embodies the familiar and unknown by incorporating imagery associated with domesticity, religious symbolism, bodily remnants, and animalistic attributes.
In these sculptures, my desires, resilience, and struggles are housed. I utilize imagery of the feral and themes of domestication to reimagine sculpture as living creatures. Elements of horror, hybridity, and the anthropomorphic intermingle together to reclaim symbols used for othering and acknowledge those unconforming to historically Christian
ideology. Bodily material and animalistic abstractions contrast with domestic objects, blurring boundaries of autonomy, belonging, and the in-between. In this, the feral is much more than just a wild animal, but a chosen detachment of thought and identity from tradition. The feral is used to reimagine objects as living creatures and question the boundaries of what is expected and accepted