Toolshedding | 2015–2019
[ from the archives | 2015 ]
In response to dialogues related to my 2015 Toolshedding installation at Weaving Hand gallery and studio in Brooklyn, I am sharing passages from my artist talk as well as a selection of materials and objects.
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The studio concept of Toolshedding grew out of a desire to interweave found and gathered materials (suggest relations) across disciplinary practices and locales.
Given that I divide my time between the U.S., Bulgaria, and Italy, I needed to create a nomadic studio process that might be easily transportable and adaptable when situated in new contexts. Two years ago, I decided to take this dialogue one step further by asking designers from the U.S., Eastern Europe, and Turkey to donate scrap materials from their studios as a way for me to further expand a fiber and textile vocabulary while on the road.
Some of these materials included Bulgarian shepherd bells, twined textiles from Archive New York, oversized pom-poms created during a collaboration with Zaida of Balmaseda studio in Puerto Rico, linen fiber donated by Berkshire artist Brece Honeycutt, and Icelandic sheepskin ‘scraps’ from the design studio of Titania Inglis.
This exercise was prompted by visual dialogues (often via social media) between artists/designers who had often never met each other but whose materials and methods suggested striking connections. I began exploring how the recycled fragments from these individuals’ studio almost seemed whole again when combined or synthesized in unexpected ways.
