Natalie Manes is a printmaker and weaver living and working in Philadelphia.

Drawn to both printmaking and weaving because of their emphasis on process, Natalie explores themes of self liberation in the context of Queer Theory and the concept of The Other. She sources imagery from Byzantine and late Roman art, architecture, and mosaics, weaving historical references into contemporary narratives.

Natalie is drawn to processes that feel devotional. All prints are by nature acheiropoietos, sacred objects not made by human hands. Prints are made by the press, as an act of communication, in an entirely invisible process. The point of contact occurs in an unobservable, dark space, between the matrix, the ink, the press, the paper, and the pressure. Natalie is interested in counterproofing, a process in which plates are run back and forth through the press to transfer imagery from paper, to plate, to paper again. This process is entirely reliant upon materials, putting the fate of the print in the hands of the press. Natalie’s prints are built up, layer by layer, to build a world of sacredness, and create a potential for healing. 

As a weaver, this devotion is continued by exploring the binary in which weaving exists, in which a loom works. Weaving is always operating on a grid, and is fundamentally composed of the horizontal and vertical, of warp and weft. Threads exist in weaving drafts and move on the loom according to a rigid binary, they’re either there or they’re not. However, as a weaver, Natalie looks to subvert this binary— she is interested in weaving drafts that create distinct blocks within the interaction of threads, to remind the viewer of weaving’s rigidity and grid, but also simultaneously showing that weaving itself exists beyond it. 

In May 2025, Natalie graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking from Tyler School of Art and Architecture.