About
As I weave, I throw a shuttle, leaving behind a strand of yarn. That strand is a marker of the moment and location it was woven, recording a new history as I weave. Weaving has long been linked to an embedding of information—weaving drafts and jacquard looms are the basis for binary code and computer programming. Weaving takes time, and there are no shortcuts to the creation of cloth. Time is a complicated concept that I’ve been researching while trying to make sense of it through my work. Translating the point where time and space meet into cloth is the basis in all I make.
I named my work Machine in Hand because I think of weaving as a physical collaboration between me and the loom, like playing the piano. I can’t make this textile work without it, and it doesn’t work without me. Together, we create cloth. As I have started to think more deeply about the spaces between and overlaps of art and craft and industry, the question of labor has become louder. My weaving work has been evolving toward recording the actual time taken to weave cloth as a way to highlight labor, showing a divide between craft-made and industrial powerloom cloth. I have been focusing on questions of who makes our clothes, who farms our fiber, and how they are valued.