Born in the Wrong Time

I specialize in making extremely slow art.

Art that takes many steps, each one them S-L-O-W.

I don't even consider myself a particularly patient person, but I somehow muster unbelievable patience when it comes to bringing into fruition a woven textile. Perhaps I'm crazy, or just weird, and maybe I'm also channeling our ancestors ability to hand craft EVERYTHING. Each one of us comes from a long, long line of humans that possessed the patience to make from scratch every single thing they used. Today we are incredibly disconnected from that trait, but it is in our genetic makeup nonetheless. It wasn't so long ago that everything from beeswax candles to clothing, to furniture, to food, was entirely made by hand. I imagine there must have been a certain satisfaction that came from having the skills to CREATE what you needed, as well as a profound connection to those things, that is absent from our current version of reality. I believe that one of the sources of the depression and loss of meaning rampant in our modern world is based in our disconnect from MAKING things with our hands.

While I'm not here on a mission to tell everyone to reject modernity, go back to the olden days and make everything by hand, I am here to keep alive one small craft that just happens to be one of humanity's oldest skills. Weaving is without a doubt one of civilization's most ancient and universal technologies. Completely unrelated cultures around the world independently figured out how to both produce yarn from fiber and combine them together in ways that created cloth, which, when you think about it, is really rather incredible. The evolution of weaving goes hand in hand with human evolution.

My husband recently commented that sometimes it seems as if I was just "born in the wrong time", and that my skill set just doesn't match what is required to succeed in the modern world. And while there is definitely some truth to that (weaving may be just about the worst possible way to try and make a decent hourly wage) what if it is also true that I AM here for a valid reason, and that reason is to keep alive a skill that is rooted in the very essence of what makes us human?

While I may be here to continue in what humans have been doing since the beginning of time -- creating something tactile out of seemingly "nothing", pouring creativity and beauty into the grid of warp and weft, pushing the limits of what cloth can hold so that we may all be reminded of the thread of connection that holds us all in the great web of life. But it's not just a nod to the past, and a way of life that is no more. It is also moving forward into the future with creativity and innovation.

In today's increasingly digital world, handmade cloth takes on a new level of uniqueness. Combining traditional techniques with contemporary ideas, materials, and even looms allows me to push the boundary of weaving into uncharted territory.

One slow step at a time creating new expressions with the ancient art of handwoven cloth.