Playing With Fiber

My fiber story began with weaving, first on a floor loom and upon realizing I was a bit in over my head, I took a step back and focused on frame loom weaving before circling back to the floor loom.

Once the floor loom and I became friends my love of weaving bloomed as I realized the endless possibilities it provides. From SAORI clothing, to small wall hangings, to large public installations. Fiber art allows my playful and imaginative side free reign filling me with the sense of freedom I have spent much of my life searching for. 

My work takes me through the process of making, remaking, destructing, and reconstructing, using yarn, recycled clothing, and even rope to bring something to life that did not exist before I began. Each piece is completely unique and could never be replicated.

My wall hangings are a product of my lifelong attraction to soft things, a worn piece of silky ribbon or my dog Abigail’s smooth floppy ear combined with my desire to find and create the coziest home.

The physical sensation of the wooden shuttle in my hands, the tension of the yarn on the loom, the fuzzy softness of the wool, bring my mind and body into the same space, forcing me to become embodied.

In a spiritual sense, through learning to bring individual threads together into a varied and unique piece, I have learned how to take the disparate and often contradicting parts of myself and fashion them into a unified whole. This process relates to my own journey toward self acceptance as well as the idea of “fitting in” and the ultimate choice to pursue authenticity over conformity. The process of making, specifically fiber art, is my medium of healing.

As my practice has grown I have expanded into felting, altered book making, and fiber collage. Each medium is a new way to tell a story. The beauty of making is that there is always something new to learn, and a new medium to explore as I process the world around me and my experience of it.