This project creates a space which bridges the gap between the inside and the outside, or the human-made interior world with the natural world. I wanted a space that not only bridged that gap, but also spoke specifically to children. I believe that because I had a lot of opportunities for outdoor play as a child, I developed a connection to the natural world which lives inside me, and made me who I am today. I thought of children in large cities, such as New York City, and wanted to create a bridge from the natural world by bringing it inside and making it theirs. By creating a tactile and interactive space that included not only textiles referencing nature but actual living moss. This leads to children directly learning about the natural world, thus sparking an interest to go outside, explore, and learn more about that world. In the children’s book I created, a character named Sigrid escapes the city to explore a forest. She is told the forest is a beautiful, enchanting world she can always visit. She learns that the forest also lives within her, through newfound bonds with the natural world, and that it is a source of strength that she can keep within herself and draw on when she returns to city life. The length of fabric which includes the character, incorporates the book’s magical world and slowly turns it into the physical natural world, letting children relate to both the story and the natural world; creating a deeper connection to the space. In the end, I have created a collection of interactive and narrative textiles, used either in a home or an educational space, to teach children about the natural world using elements of intrigue which can inspire them to nurture, imagine, and explore.
“Learning to see mosses mingles with my first memory of a snowflake. Just as the limits of ordinary perception lies another level in the hierarchy of beauty, of leaves as tiny and perfectly ordered as a snowflake, of unseen lives complex and beautiful. All it takes is attention and knowing how to look. I’ve found mosses to be a vehicle for intimacy with the landscape, like a secret knowledge of the forest...”
Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
CAD in Textiles class where we learned to use NedGraphics and Photoshop to create patterns and size exact prints for interiors based on a concept. My concept was leaf skeletons.
Growing up in Minnesota, having such a large backyard, and spending many hours exploring nature, shaped how I live my life today. In 2014, I received a box of childhood home video footage my father took. Studying the nostalgic footage and having memories flood back to me by witnessing different scenes shown on the film, I took screenshots of specific moments where I felt a particularly strong memory: whether it was a memory triggered by emotion, touch, or place; such as the family hammock, laying in the grass, and reaching for a tree branch. I collected these screenshots and created a color theme and a painted pattern, that I felt was specific to my topic. I then used Adobe Photoshop to clean artwork, Nedgraphics for repeat, using Pointcarre to assign weave structures, and choosing yarns: thus resulting in a jacquard woven fabric.
Some of my works have been inspired by the beauty of the ocean and ocean creatures. In the first piece, I created a 9 foot handwoven, dipped dye representation of a horseshoe crab. I developed an interest, as I discovered they have blue blood and are prehistoric looking creatures that resemble pith helmets that roam around on the bottom of the ocean. Horseshoe crabs only come to the shore to spawn twice a year during the full moon. These creatures are harmless survivors, nearly 60,000 years old, like living fossils. They can live up to 60 years and they have no immune system. They have blood rich with copper and antibodies which kills any infection right away. The political aspect I wanted to bring to the piece was the fact that the FDA catches horseshoe crabs and drain 30% of their brilliantly blue copper blood as a final test for vaccines. (to rid them of bacteria) They are then let back into the ocean as they are not allowed to kill them, yet some don't survive this act. The first couple of smaller pieces are experiments and idea explorations for my main topic. I created this piece from linen thread donated by the Lenore Tawney foundation to RISD. I was lucky enough to use this beautiful natural fiber. I wove the piece long and spaced apart, like the tracks the horseshoe crabs create when they crawl across the sandy shorelines. It was then dip dyed a blue gradient, the darkest being the head. I then used a heat press to transfer a gold foil trail on the bottom of the piece representing how precious this blue blood is to human vaccines. This is a creature of nonviolence, used to save human lives. This goes unnoticed by most human beings. I am a large supporter of animal rights, environmental activism, and eco textiles.
My second piece is an embroidered piece mixed with plastic based on the great pacific garbage patch. Scientists have confirmed there are 5 garbage patches across the world’s oceans where trash, mostly tiny pieces of plastic, accumulate as ocean currents come together in a gyre. Modeled after one of the 5 gyres, this piece addresses the eternal motion of our plastic consumption and the final stage of consumption: ocean landfill. The largest garbage patch is made up of about 7 million tons of mostly floating plastic waste, most of which is no larger than 10mm across, similar in size to plankton that the fish eat. Larger pieces of plastic in the ocean eventually breakdown from the sunlight they are exposed to into smaller and smaller pieces, but it does not ever go away completely. In my piece, I engaged my student body by asking the community to release their daily plastic bag consumption to me, instead of to the trash. I collected more than 100 bags and used them in this piece. I also incorporated hand embroidery - a slow and tedious process - which contrasts to the fast consumption and collection of the areas with the plastic bags.
