Mark Newport explores his masculinity through knitting.

But what the associate professor from the Heberger College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University knits can’t be compared to grandma’s winter scarves. Instead, Newport creates comic book covers and superhero costumes.

“Through the choice of form-trading card, garment, bed cover, superhero costumes and the method of transformation of the original object, I compare myself to what I have been shown and told about being a man,” he said.

Items in the exhibit are created by artists with the use of fiber materials that provide an interpretation of the human body.

For Ann Coddington, an assistant art professor at Eastern, bringing comic book covers and superhero costumes to the Tarble Arts Center was a way to bring a “provocative” exhibit to Eastern.

Coddington is also a fiber artist, which made coordinating an unusual exhibit even more enjoyable for her.

“Fiber material is a less common exhibition media,” she said.

It was not until the 1960’s that fiber materials became acceptable as a show material, she said.

One of Coddington’s favorite things about fiber art is that what is used are common everyday materials.

Fiber is around everyday, so it is nice to see how these can be used in an artistic sense, Coddington said. She said the display will open artistic doorways to students because the materials are very familiar.

Weaving techniques is just one of the many displays at the “Body in Fiber” exhibit. It can be viewed until October 8.

Two of the artists, Joan Livingstone and Amy Honchell, will discuss their works at 7 p.m. on Sept. 28. A reception will precede the lecture at 6 p.m.

The artists, through their displays, show their interpretations of the human body through the use of fiber processing materials that include felting, knitting, embroidery, weaving and upholstery.

Livingstone, chair of the undergraduate division at the School of the Art

Institute of Chicago, used felted materials to create to pieces of art that represent body parts that include limbs, fingers and sexual organs.

“I am interested in abstract forms that reference the body as both organ and skin,” she said.

Honchell, instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, focused her display on skin and used balloons and netting.

“Stretched translucent materials under tension stand in for the gore of viscera and, like a facelift, help create a heightened awareness of what is not there the oily, wrinkled, flaky, sweaty reality of one’s own fallible body,” she said.

Coddington said she enjoyed searching for the other fiber artists works for the exhibit and thinks students will as well because they are done with common materials.

“(It was) an experience I find extremely potent,” she said.

Coddington knew some of the artists personally, and that made exploring their works in a “rich, complex medium” a journey that she would never forget and it made the time even more enjoyable.

“I was interested in kind of exploring,” she said. “I appreciate the artist’s different interpretation of the body.”

Although she did not know everyone, she describes all fiber artists as a

“small knit group.” No pun intended.