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Aliana Grace Bailey is an interdisciplinary fiber artist, designer, and care worker. She was born and raised in Washington, DC, and lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a passionate advocate for radical self-love, wellness, healing, and grief support. Her fiber narratives take up space with bold softness. Aliana’s work embraces artmaking to build intimacy, archive stories, and create inner peace. Aliana’s work is large, emotional, and vibrant, encompassing the body and providing viewers comfort while exploring familial connections, memories, and heart-tugging experiences.
About Soft Gather
Founded in 2023, Soft Gather™ is a series of trauma-informed healing installations utilizing fiber arts and color therapy. These traveling spaces invite Black communities to gather, reflect, rest, and nurture relationships through intentional design that honors mind, body, and spirit. Each installation lives in community spaces for extended periods, adapting to the community's needs. Through weaving, crochet, rug tufting, sewing, screen printing, upholstery, and surface pattern design, these spaces come to life. From Black Maternal Health Week at The Bloom Collective to future installations in schools and therapy suites, Soft Gather creates accessible sanctuaries for community softness, healing, and well-being.
About Soft Gather, Quiet Flame
Soft Gather, Quiet Flame is an extension of my broader practice,Soft Gather.Soft Gather, Quiet Flame is a series of intimate gatherings in my Baltimore studio for quiet, introverted Black women and gender-expansive individuals seeking to explore their quiet power, connections, and fiber play. This project is my answer to a question I didn't know I was asking: where do we go to be seen without performing, to connect without depleting ourselves? When I held the first gathering on March 30, 2025, I kept it intimate—five people came together, with a waitlist of ten more—proof that this space was needed and that others were searching for it too. These aren't just fiber arts gatherings; they're about reclaiming the power in our quietness, building community at a pace that honors rather than exhausts us.
This project lives in my body as much as it does in my mind. Through open studio sessions guided by conversation prompts, intentional playlists, cozy seating surrounded by vibrant colors and textures, and access to materials for crochet, weaving, rug tufting, and more, we practice something radical: being together without the pressure to be "on," initiating and nurturing new friendships while finding warmth in each other's presence the way a candle flame holds steady in a still room. As someone who understands the unique exhaustion of navigating the world as both Black and introverted, I created the space I needed to exist.Soft Gather, Quiet Flame honors that our reserved nature isn't something to overcome—it's a form of strength, a sustained inner fire that burns with intention. It's special because it insists that our softness, our need for slowness, our quiet intensity all deserve space, celebration, and community—and that collective care can be built through creativity and conversation, together.
An Embrace of My Nature
Creating Soft Gather was an act of me leaning fully into my nature, heart, and purpose—bringing softness, color, and care into the communities I value. Soft Gather, Quiet Flame allows me to honor the way I naturally move through the world. Building these gatherings is about trusting that my quietness, my need for intimate connection, and my belief in slow, intentional relationship-building are what others need too. This project is permission I'm giving myself to create from the center of who I am, and in doing so, I'm discovering that my most authentic work is also my most necessary.
