Woven Structures

Inspired by my own experiences of growing up in a textile mill town in South Carolina, much of this work explores the labor of production. Invisible Labor is a collection of 77 handwoven handkerchiefs that represent people I know who worked in one of the surrounding mills. I used mill end yarn from the area to weave  each piece of cloth. The fabric constructions are inspired by a 1777 textile sample book of cloth that would have been produced for clothing sailors, artisans, and slaves. Piecing handwoven and industrially woven cloth together in shapes that allude to the body is a way of capturing this history. And, finally, Mass+Effort is an installation of salvaged bricks from abandoned textile mills in my home town and fabric woven in community workshops using local mill end yarn.

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Click on the larger image for more details about each project.