Big Softies

The impulse to investigate via touch is often associated with children. Adults know to keep their hands in their pockets, especially in an art gallery. But why?

Contrasting textures and unexpected combinations of materials entice viewers to reach out and experience my work with their hands, a return to tactile exploration. My work is functional, which heightens the temptation to touch. By juxtaposing materials with dissimilar textures, my aim is to reward those who choose to experience my work with their hands, not just their eyes.

Conceptually, We are all connected from Ocean to Forest, is about how people are often too removed from nature and how it has a detrimental impact on our environments. Ironically Covid-19, has forced people to get out into nature because simply there is nowhere else to go. I created this piece as a reminder that everything in the natural world is interwoven.

I weave because I love it. I have engaged in a number of other fiber arts and enjoyed them, but I always come back to weaving as my first love. My approach to weaving is both inductive and intuitive. Induction is necessary to handle the highly logical, mathematical process of weaving on a loom. Intuition is necessary for turning a weaving into a work of art. Approaching weaving in both these ways, I am able to create a woven piece starting from several points. It may be the yarn, the weaving pattern or technique, or an image or idea. The fun of weaving is to incorporate all of them into something new, to do something I have never done before. As a weaver, I am always exploring, trying new things. I mainly weave on a standard 8 shaft loom, using commercial yarns, but not always. If there is one theme that drives my work, it is the natural beauty of the woods of NW Pennsylvania where I live.

With being both a professional artist and Art Therapist, much of my work surrounds focusing on the process of making rather than on the product. It is truly about making meaning through creative expression in conjunction with the feelings and thoughts derived from looking at the finished piece. Weaving captures this in a beautiful way by telling stories through interwoven colors, textures, and patterns. These woven stories capture feelings, memories, and states of being from that specific time of creation and change meaning once completed when looked at through different lenses, environments, and even mental emotional states. The beauty of art creation is it’s ability to capture a moment in time yet also allow for emotional projection from not only the artist but each of it’s viewers.

I take inspiration from the area that I live in and places I would like to visit.  I try to use different tools like fabric to make a painting or crochet to create an aquarium, I like to think outside of the box with everything that I use and do.

Fiber is incorporated into my body of work primarily because of its flexibility. Wool can be felted to conform to the interiors of forms I create in ways metal just can not. While wool is useful for  sculpting, it can also be used to contrast the hard materials I use as the body of my pieces; such as metal and enamel. In my self-portrait series, I use wool for its softness, with it being meant to represent my softer more variable feelings. This vulnerability is contrasted with the hard exteriors I display to others, these works of art are representations of anxiety, comfort, and how I view myself.

I am fascinated by jewelry and household items because they are objects of intimacy. I am drawn to stories about how we connect to each other and the physical spaces we inhabit. My recent work is an exploration of identity as it relates to memory loss and dementia. If we are all just a collection of memories, what happens to our sense of identity as the ability to recall our own history fades? Without personal narrative do we become lost to ourselves, shadows of our own pasts? Making this work is an investigation of communication and recollection, the habits and hopes that remain as memory fades away.

Textile techniques are an important part of the storytelling process for me. Many of the works in this series recall individuals for whom sewing, and needlework were an important aspect of life, and a way to both provide for and protect those they loved.  Incorporating these techniques provides me a connection to the subjects of my narratives, and allows me the opportunity to stitch and mend for them as they did for others.

As an artist, there is quite a debate surrounding whether art needs a meaning, purpose, or if it can simply be for visual aesthetic—this is where I prefer to throw caution to the wind. Much of my art has no specific meaning behind it; I do not feel like art needs to convey some sort of underlying message. For me, I create art as a way to express my mind’s impulses.

For years I was primarily a ceramic artist until I was introduced to needle felting. I have grown a great appreciation for the art form because it highly contrasts the world I was originally surrounded by in ceramics; hard surfaces and delicate processes compared to the soft nature of wool felting. Working with my hands and being able to truly manipulate a form is what I find joy in doing—as if a form of therapy. While often recreating the natural aspects of the universe through my own perspective I find it important for my artwork to be able to speak for itself, standing alone in a crowded room I want my art to pull the viewer into its space.

At the end of the day, whether my art is just for visual pleasure or if I feel it holds the secrets to happiness, the true purpose of my art and why I am an artist is expression. Having the ability to share these expressions and display a glimpse of my headspace to the world in a way that I am so passionate about is something I will never take for granted.

My work formally explores form, surface, colour and material integration. Using inspiration from the world around me, I aim to create sculptural objects that reflect my own notions of beauty and the sense of child-like wonder that is lost as time passes. Inspirations include the hardware store, food, nature, and kids crafting materials.

While making, I consider if a person can be hard and soft, serious and playful, youthful and mature, simultaneously. By incorporating play and experimentation in the making process, I reflect on how these contradictions can come together in form, surface, colour, and materiality. Textiles, specifically flocking and yarns,  in combination with ceramic, explores the consideration of making a hard object soft. There is an element of illusion present that I find particularly thrilling when these two highly contrasting materials come together as they can cause one to wonder what exactly the object before them is. Child-like wonder is important; it draws you in and encourages you to slow down and look at the world around you a little closer.

Throughout the adversities I’ve faced, it was art that healed my soul. The creative process allows me to transcend into another realm. I get lost in the present moment rather than focusing on negative aspects of external events; further allowing total relaxation of the mind, body, and spirit. Art is a therapeutic healing tool that harnesses energy and telepathically transfers the artist’s thoughts and feelings embedded in the work with the observer, subconsciously strengthening the underlying harmonic connection we have with our surroundings. Once we notice this new dimension of existence, we begin to discover that we are no longer isolated entities in separation with one another, we are elemental parts of an inseparable network of interactions.

My art is a physical representation of the energetic connection to everything surrounding us. I am a multidisciplinary artist, with a focus in fiber arts, photography, and art therapy. By combining my thoughts, visions, and experiences, I create mystical artwork that speaks to those who are willing to listen.  I use a variety of materials to open the participator’s mind to the healing powers located internally and externally, reminding them we are one with the universe. Once we tap into this magical frequency, we begin to free ourselves from the cage of fear and separation; awarding us the opportunity to rediscover the power of love.

As a cactus matures through harsh environments, it undergoes a state change through a survival technique called “corking”. At its base, soft flesh turns solid and bark-like to accommodate and provide a stronger support for the inevitability of green new growth. The prospect of future growth transforms its present reality.

As humans, we consider the world we wish to build by evaluating our present reality and how we can use it to catalyze a metamorphosis. To build a new world, we must become achingly aware of our environment.  I am in love with the potential of the world and the spaces we create because I am constantly confronted with its failings to include and support me. As a person who is mixed race, I am in constant relationship with change and my surroundings; my identity and experiences are hybrid and constantly shifting based on my environment, how I identify, and how I am identified. I have to try and build space for myself in the cracks the intrusion of my otherness creates. We are constantly shaping our environments, just as they shape us; the process of changing, disintegrating, being reformed is constant. Transformation is the space where the past has a reckoning to becoming a future, where there is radical change under intense pressure.  In my artwork to build spaces I can belong to and in, I am constantly forced to confront how we divide and categorize ourselves. Is it that I exist fractured and unwhole across the intersection of my cultures? Or am I an opportunity to rethink our divisions?

In my artworks, I utilize imagery from my Malaysian Chinese cultural heritage to draw the line between where I come from and who I will become. Batik patterning and the repetition of natural imagery is woven throughout all of my work. As someone who comes from a history of displacement, these cultural markers give me a sense of place and situate me where I am: home. My art physically manifests my own various states of transformation, as I bring into being environments that are conducive to my growth. I bring together dualities, transform reality, like the cactus who marries bark to flesh. My materials themselves go through transformations, state changes. They reflect physical dualities— hard ceramic, soft fiber— in an effort to reform brokenness into something beautiful and new. In the kiln, clay solidifies, quartz expands within its structure, sometimes cracking as it transforms. When paper dissolves into almost nothing in water, it is reformed through clinging to that which moves through it. I see cracks and fractures as sites full of potential for new growth, sites of change. My worlds are full of breaking, and rebuilding. They are futures for me to look to, environments for me to learn from.

Change is sorely needed: the social and physical structures of our world are falling apart. We live in a state of chaos to which none of us can truly belong. This body of work is for those of us who are trying to grow amidst the brokenness of the world and are being reformed. Our transformation as individuals is inseparable from social transformation. We have to constantly be in a cycle of reflection and action to be in a dynamic state of transformation.

My fiber work as of late has been knitting hats with shrinkable wool and felting them. Once felted and shaped as I like I add needle felted objects to them to include mushrooms, gnomes, animals and more.

I create dimensional jewelry pieces, interpreting organic shapes and natural forms. My work is influenced by my time spent living on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, reflecting the colors, textures, and forms of the coastal environment. The elements of water, wind, and sand combine with my interest in the botanical to inspire my jewelry.   I use enamels and fiber elements to add color and contrasting textures to my work. In developing my pieces, I am interested in exploring the juxtaposition between the hard surfaces of metal and glass enamel and the soft surfaces of fiber. The addition of sewn and felted fiber elements creates an opportunity to add color and tactile interest to my pieces.  I am not concerned with accurately representing a specific organism in scientific detail, but in capturing a spirit or essence and the dynamic growth cycles of the natural world.

I like to explore the idea of “play” in my work, experimenting with color and shape in a way that brings a sense of wonder to the viewer. I often waiver between detailed realism and imaginative pieces, bringing a balance to my collection of animals, creatures, and organic forms. I create most of my work by felting wool, either with a needle or with soap and water. I use needle felting as a way of sculpting the wool into the shape I desire by building up the piece slowly. Similar enough to sculpting with clay, this is where I began my journey into feltmaking. I like the predictability of creating a piece that comes together as I work. The other method I use is wet felting. This ancient method has evolved to using resists and other techniques to create intricate detailed sculptures almost by magic. What starts off as flat layers of wool, opens up to become a hollow form with protruding parts. This particular method of wet felting requires much more planning than needle felting, and I enjoy the challenge of figuring out a certain shape or form.

Humans evolved not with ceramics but because of ceramics, the same argument can  be made for fiber arts. Without the development of fiber arts ancient people would’ve been significantly more limited in their quest for survival. Fiber has played an important role in my work for years giving me the opportunity to express familial and historic connections in a free form medium. At the age of 4 my mom taught me to crochet, the same age she was when my grandmother taught her. This generational connection informs the larger picture of my work and allows me a way to pay homage to the craft and dedication that led me to where I find myself today. Crocheting enhances my work by creating an eternal juxtaposition between the rigid male dominated field of ceramics and the traditionally ascribed female world of craft art creating the non binary child that is my work.

I use material and process to construct contexts to better understand and define connections between seemingly disparate ideas–such as hard and soft materials as well as hand-made and machine-made methods. Integrating both analog and digital methods including 3D printing, I embed layers of material and processual information in collaboration with computer-aided design: using a direct manipulation of material through hand-building, sewing, felting, and crochet, I embed layers of personal experiences and history into each object. I reflect on how these melded relationships expand rather than diminish their individual potential. Each element goes through stages of transformation including pinching, stretching, or undergoing extreme temperature changes. I use many representations of ‘softness’ throughout and the inherent adaptability of material is a reflection on softness as strength rather than as weakness.

I am a fiber artist drawn to capturing the wonders in nature.  I enjoy the process of layering a variety of materials such as wool, silk, wire, wood, and paper to create a captured place or moment. As I introduce the viewer to the tactilely enticing juxtaposition of various textures, I invite them to examine subtle, yet delicate details found only when we stop and ponder.

For me, the combination of metal and fiber came naturally. As a child, learning textile techniques like knitting and crochet led me to explore materials and the creation of functional and wearable objects. The addition of metal did not come until many years later but sparked a sense of wonder in the objects and mechanisms possible beyond what I had experience in. Metal, resilient, architectural, and diverse, is now a sort of home base and grounds my practice while also providing an exciting foundation for new ideas. Exploring the forms of metal that can extend and stretch my work conceptually has been my recent focus and led me to work in a combination of crocheted wire, fiber, and recycled materials. In creating these wearable and sculptural art objects, fibrous materials such as wool and yarn lend themselves to the conception of art that bridges that physical gap, adding comfort and tactility that can be related to more easily. Inspired by the relationships and organisms within marine ecosystems, I use felted wool, silk, and various found and recycled yarns to add another dimension of color, texture, and physicality. The metal wire provides color and luster, its malleable nature allows for the expansion of the material in many directions while holding its shape, reflecting the physical and visual elements of underwater environments. The body is the environment these forms live on, like a reef to coral or ship to a barnacle, symbolizing the relationship between two organisms through adaptation, instinct, and necessity.

My work questions the reaction to the failed or supplemented body. The work explores this through a series of jewelry objects that combine bodily forms and surfaces with structures and shapes prevalent in jewelry and ornament, oscillating between references of ornamentation and bodily organs. The work highlights the surface of the human body through mimicry. Inflated skin-like forms framed in metal imply sites of imagined interventions. Microbial cellulose (MiC), a fiber woven by bacteria and material used in medicine for wound care, represents the human body. The use of microbial cellulose and leather comments on ideas of surface, and how it becomes more than a barrier. It collects pieces of its environment and silently communicates to its viewers.  Growing, manipulating, and combining these materials with fabricated metal parts allows me to create a dialog between the living and non-living, the human and the machine.

Using sensitive household materials such as fabric and thread allows my work to speak of the domestic spaces where personal rituals appear. Media such as bedsheets and blankets, as well as tea bags and wallpaper, can all be dyed, cut, and sewn. By using vintage ephemera, my jewelry and sculpture explore the sweetness of the impermanent, while elevating and preserving these often discarded materials. A threadbare bedsheet calls to the daily cycles of life tucked inside the private bedroom. Upholstery fabric references a luxurious adornment of domestic space, and canvas contrasts this in its stark stiff blankness. Mark-making on these surfaces, whether that be in thread or graphite, allows me to record process and time. These materials are rich in context and by working with and altering them, I examine the allure of ritual in the domestic space.

To create my fiber art I spin cleaned and prepared loose fiber into a spun fiber or single then ply that spun fiber into a yarn. After collecting several colors and styles of yarn, I plan out a project calculating the yardage of yarn needed. Then I tie the yarn to my loom in long vertical strands, after which I pass yarn horizontally through the vertical strands to create a weave. The weave is completed by pushing the horizontal yarn down firmly to create a cloth, cut from the loom and washed to tighten it into place and ready for use. Before starting with fiber arts I had a 15 year career as a massage therapist. I retired from massage to prioritize the health and the function of my hands. I started fiber arts to keep me busy and to give my hands less strenuous work. After learning about the history of fiber I became inspired by human ingenuity and found connections to my faith and community. There have been multiple themes and concepts for my work inspired by my faith, themes suggested by mentors, by utility, or by commission. What drives me during my work is the passion to discover something new and to challenge myself.

Sachet pouch was one of the common wearable pieces for Chinese before the end of Qing Dynasty. It is an embroidery pouch, usually made of silk or other fabric. Inside the pouch, there are herbs, flowers, and spices. It is tightened by thread, and people wear it on their waist. Since western revolution, China started to be influenced by western culture. Chinese changed their clothing from layering to suit, which is more practical to store things in pocket. Nowadays, we can only see the pouch in ancient Chinese shows, instead of real life.

Nuno felt is a new technique that developed couple decades ago. I used nuno felting technique to combine felt and silk in a modern way in the piece, as the intention to merge now and the past. By making this sachet pouch into brooches, I tend to bring back this traditional wearable object into life in a contemporary way. I hope that by making it into a brooch, people can wear it wherever they want. Since it is a fabric pouch with dry lavender inside, locked in a silver frame, the person who is wearing it has the choice to make their own scent, and it will become a sign of their identity.

My work in both areas: printmaking and fiber art reflect my interest in natural and man-made world. The richness of textures, structures and forms in our environment inspire me. I look for the beauty in microscopic detail or in a large architectural structure. My methodology is consistent: I look, analyze, deconstruct, build and assemble my vision. Materials and techniques are similar in all my work, but in each piece there is a new view of my experience. My works are mostly monochromatic or achromatic to maintain the simplicity and to focus on composition and textures. By continuing work in a series, I create a representation of my observations and recollections. I analyze while searching for answers on the co-existing of two worlds: nature and man-made.

This series explores the familiar landscapes of a digital world superimposed on the foliage of rare tropical plant specimens. Coincidentally, these lush species also lead a double life as popular houseplants with a sometimes cult-like following and appeal. How did this happen? Well for one, these striking plants make excellent content, with their splotches of pastel pink or polka dotted patterning or otherworldly solid white leaves. But there’s also the darker and more recent phenomenon of the desire to latch onto any other life form available to tend and care for during the months of isolation that we’ve recently endured. The excitement and anticipation of watching a new leaf slowly unfurl or fresh buds appear after a long period of dormancy, something to look forward to during quarantine.

Kristi Rae Wilson is an interdisciplinary jeweler who’s work investigates the contrast of hard and soft materials. These juxtaposing materials are fabricated, to construct wearable art that integrate quilt components. Wilsons’ work attempts to contemplate ideal notions of comfort.  The metal used in this work provides structural integrity, via mechanisms, to permanently connect the two materials. This medium also serves as a way to memorialize the fabric. Wilson achieves this by etching quilt designs directly onto silver sheet. In addition, she permanently combines her metal and fiber scraps by sewing and/or soldering them together. Quilts comfort us; they provide warmth, preserve familial legacies and prove our universal appreciation of the handmade. Sometimes small-scale quilts or “lap quilts” are displayed as wall hangings, for this reason, Wilson’s work can be viewed as a low-relief sculpture when viewed off the body or as jewelry when worn on the body.

I strive to engage the dichotomies that surround social and familial standards of the idea of femininity. This is done by using hair as it is often viewed as a shield, with disgust, or as beautiful, but often only in specific areas of the body. This, combined with the bittersweetness of growing up. Losing the freedom of self as simple acts such as growing out leg hair can be seen as an act of rebellion. I reminisce on this childhood innocence by braiding hair with a light blue bow that is in stark contrast to the raw clay that holds it.

I am a jewelry artist who fascinates playing with a wide range of unconventional materials, such as plastic, rubber, fabric, and found objects. I transform and repurpose the alternative materials into wearable art, giving them special texture, distinct tactile, and new meaning during my creation. “Passerby” series aims to capture the moments I observe people who walk next to me on streets, or people that are pictured in the photos inside fashion magazines. The inspiration for “Passerby5” came from a young man who wore a mosaic suit, huge sneakers, and a cap with blue color on the street, and “Passerby”2 was inspired by a backstage photo from a fashion magazine. I transform these quick images into jewelry pieces that can be worn. To picture my impressions of these quick images, I deconstructed and reconstructed the fashion elements and introduced them to my pieces including fabric and buttons.  The inspiration for “Tired” series came from a small and interesting moment in my life, a tired afternoon. When I took my pen and sketchbook to figure out what to do next, I was very sleepy. I felt my eyes and eyelashes become so heavy and almost falling off from my eyes. I want to express the warm feeling that always comes with tiredness by using gloves and fabric on the artwork. The eyelashes were formed with light and flexible aluminum cans, which can express the eyelashes’ texture while creating a contrast with the soft materials on the main body of work.

As a jewelry designer, Jiashi has a keen interest and curiosity in life, nature, and environmental protection. She specializes in making jewelry out of different recyclable materials, reusing the most insignificant and easily discarded “trash” and giving them precious meaning. Through her jewelry, Jiashi hopes to raise people’s awareness that environmental protection starts with the details of everyday life.

Plastic doesn’t break down naturally and burning it also causes air pollution problems. As plastics are discarded, they can seep into ecosystems and cause incalculable damage to Marine life. So she made unique “yarn” out of garbage bags carelessly discarded by people around her and gave them new meanings by crochet. She hopes to remind people of the pollution and harm of garbage to the environment through the series “Stranded Fish”. The collection will use recycled plastic bags and bottles as the main materials.