Fibers

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https://hdl.handle.net/10217/180168

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Open Access
Mitchie Kellogg: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Kellogg, Mitchie, artist
The artist's statement: Over the past year and a half, I have experienced true unfiltered grief for the first time. Since experiencing my first funeral last August, I have attended a total of five. Each were the ages of 20, 23, 29, 74, and 95. Every funeral was traumatic in its own right and taught me how special it is to be truly alive while we are here, and how much of an impact we all leave on each other without recognizing it. In lieu of these experiences, my recent series explores my reflections on grief through hand woven cloth, cyanotype, and Sashiko embroidery. I was recently able to spend time abroad in Japan, and my experience of the art and culture associated with spirituality and the balance of light and dark taught me so much about grief and has had a large influence on my work. I learned a new perspective on death and loss through studying and reflecting on the Japanese aesthetic world view of wabi sabi, and I express this through my use of Sashiko embroidery. Sashiko is a type of Japanese embroidery that uses a running stitch with white thread to strengthen a piece of fabric, and is seen consistently throughout my work as a way to add and take away from the images. Much like the cyanotype process which can be seen throughout my latest work, grief is the image that emerges from absence, and you can see and appreciate what you love more clearly after experiencing loss. Over time I reflected and realized that grief had always been present, just in different ways which weren't always specific to people. I grieve my childhood, the few years of innocence I experienced, and relationships with my family, especially with my mother. I grieve so many could've-beens for if this or that happened instead, but true loss has made me recognize how special my experiences are to me as a human being. Loss makes the present shine brighter, and brings meaning to experiences we each have. I represent myself in my work as the hand woven cloth that these images are printed upon, the memories and experiences which have shaped my being and the way I interact with the world and my communities. Although there is grief and mourning for what has been lost, there is also the deep appreciation for having experienced life at all when you have seen lives ended far too soon and lives that had been filled to their end. This appreciation is what creates the image of what I see in the present.
Open Access
Hannah Johnson: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Johnson, Hannah, artist
The artist's statement: I have always been drawn to textile and sculptural work but I did not always know that fiber arts existed as an established medium. Discovering it has been like finding a soulmate, a medium that suits me just as much as I suit it. My hands think in their own way, pioneering the path for my projects, exploring new concepts, patterns and forms. This is something that fibers as a medium lends itself to while conserving the inherent humanity and history of the tactile through weaving, silk screen printing, and dying techniques.My work is both conceptual and process based. The concept may sometimes come first, typically accompanied by research and then deepened by the process but other times the process informs me of the concept as long as I place my trust in it. Most of the time it is a combination of the two: concept and process that drives the creation. I work hand in hand with my art, as if it were a conversation. In this sense it is a collaboration between the artwork itself and me as an artist that results in the final piece. I deal with cultural and emotional themes, utilizing art as a way of processing what can often be a fast paced, chaotic yet beautiful life. I grew up moving throughout the Midwest, Colombia, Chile and Colorado. The constant change in language and culture in my life has expanded my perceptions and this is consistently reflected in my work. I am observant and curious about culture, society and humanity; how we function on a variety of levels, especially in context to myself. I weave many perspectives and layers of meaning into each work of art I create but it is my hope that the viewer brings their own interpretation and reflection to my pieces. Seeing the themes in context to their own experience. In trying to understand the world around us, understanding ourselves and knowing where we stand is a crucial first step that, when taken, allows us to see everything else more clearly.
Open Access
Anne Guo: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Guo, Anne, artist
The artist's statement: When working with fiber techniques, I focus on the concept of style and clothing. I have learned that standard clothing only fits right on some body types. I have a love for Asian fashion, but the sizes are almost way too small for regular American bodies. Finding clothing in the color you want can also be frustrating. So, I show people that fashion does not need to be dictated by the clothing companies. So, each piece of clothing I make is a style I like made with yarn. Embracing the yarn material, I work in crochet, embroidery, and weaving. The idea of clothing that I want to make dictates what process I use. Sometimes, clothing just needs embellishments to level up the piece. When I want to experiment with fluidity in shape in clothing, I go to crochet. I tend to go to weaving's pattern consistency when thinking about patterns. When doing images on clothing, I tend to gravitate to embroidery. It shows that each piece is one of a kind.
Open Access
RayAnn Garcia: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Garcia, RayAnn, artist
The artist's statement: My passions are a never-ending discovery, I am a first-generation, ethnically mixed, independent transfer student from Denver, Colorado. I am also an inspiring artist, designer, sister, daughter, and friend; hoping to live a life full of prosperity. Throughout my life, I find myself gravitating towards self-expressionism and craving the feeling of creating something artistically beautiful. Throughout my fibers journey, I discovered a love for construction and finishings. I admire good craftsmanship and aim to produce only quality pieces and forms. I recognize that within my fibers arts, I strive to create a feeling of vision, direction, and space. I create pieces of work that replicates my living spaces and invites viewers to envision home. A majority of my artworks are created with the purpose of becoming decoration and contributions to my homes. I recognize that I constantly live in a world of design, and that I have the power to 'design' my own life and everything within it. The pieces I produce showcase how a designer's personal home space is constructed through the fabrication of artworks and interior attributes. The overarching themes and characteristics for my Fiber work includes modern, clean, simplified abstraction, monochromatic schemes, textures, and spaces. The techniques that I use to create most of my art pieces include weaving, sewing, quilting, knitting, embroidery, and screen printing. The homogeneous idea in most of my fibers artworks is within the value of creating a home. As I create a home by flourishing my living spaces with decorative pieces, constructed textures, soft sculpture forms, and woven textiles, I am contributing to the idea of spaces and connection, in conjunction to expressing my persona and visual aspirations towards the future.
Open Access
Lesly Alvarez-Rivera: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Alvarez-Rivera, Lesly, artist
The artist's statement: When I discovered the world of artmaking during my high school years, I realized that I struggled with thinking and creating ideas for myself. I learned how to make art to appease my audience and within a few years I deconstructed the processes of how I made art to rebuild my style and technique. Deconstructing the process of fiber art helped me discover what I love about fibers. I learned how to originate my art starting at the very beginning of the process from creating, coloring, and forming fiber. My preferred techniques to make my art are dyeing with natural colors and weaving. Both processes require a sense of control where I choose the colors and depth in the dye and the pattern of my weaving. However, there is still so much out of my control that creates an organic spectacle of the product. Fibers is gentle and forgiving when it comes to 'mistakes.' A fabric that was not thoroughly dyed leaves gorgeous variations of depth in the fabric. Weaving is a mathematical technique that needs exact calculations, but the colors and patterns used change the atmosphere of what the weaving will communicate to the viewers. Every decision in my artworks surprises me at the end because of the unpredictability with my process. I hope to create woven and dyed works that materialize the excitement of when I get to create a new work and I aim to show the world my artwork - specifically to other fiber artists as an assurance that there is room for fiber art, too.
Open Access
Jaden Scott: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Scott, Jaden, artist
The artist's statement: Memories are invaluable to me. They are passed from person to person, generation to generation, friend to friend, and will outlive what they remember. Sharing these memories through storytelling, artifacts, hidden meanings, and manifested abstract ideas are the goals of my work. Being able to show a deeply personal experience from the inside and share it outwardly is at the root of my expression of memories. I create to hold onto family, friends, past and future versions of myself, and my own challenges I faced in small physical fragments. My work is a collection of personal souvenirs. My personal souvenirs are all rooted in narratives: being diagnosed with an incurable disease, past and future versions of myself, my background in dance, my exploration of gender, and, most prominently: my heritage. My grandparents were farmers and lived on a multi-acre farm, their work ethic and overall way of life heavily inspire my work and the narratives I tell. It is important for me to take these experiences and transform them into work, through which I take the time to reflect on them and myself during the process. In my fibers practices, I focus on bringing together materials, techniques, and physicality that have a lot of importance to me and the work. The larger acts of movement that go into these pieces feed energy into the work. I sit with the pieces and self reflect on myself and the work during the long hours of the process. I find that quilting and weaving allow me the most opportunity for this through physicality and movement. In those techniques, I use a lot of hand-dyed and found materials that feed into the overall depth of meaning in my works. I find satisfaction in the intense physical labor and time spent needed to produce my fibers works. By creating work that dives into deeply personal stories, I am able to dissect the impacts certain events had on me and process them through my work. Taking multiple hours to go through the process of creating a piece allows me time to sit with the ideas and events, and come out the other side a little bit wiser. There is a lot of nuance in the choices I make during my process and I can spend hours detailing the entire story and reasoning in each piece I make. It is my goal to share my narratives, my love for the craft, and myself through my works.
Open Access
Riley McGill: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) McGill, Riley, artist
The artist's statement: In my fibers work,I focus heavily on instinctual process and experience - making quick decisions and doing what the piece feels it needs is crucial for me to truly and freely express myself and experience the materials I am working with. I go into my work with very little plan or attachment to the end goal, because I feel that this gives me much more freedom to act on instinct and natural expression, as well as build a deeper natural attachment and relationship to my work and materials. This instinctual and experiential process has lead me into the realm of abstract work, where quick decisions are key. Other key elements of my work are self expression, and the unexpected. I put and find myself into all of my work, and my art is a vehicle for me to find and make new and unique things that I like and that are personal and have obvious ties to myself and my personal style. It is important for all of my work to be able to be recognizable as mine,and working with an abstract, instinct-based process is the best way to naturally, and truthfully display myself and my style through my art. I like to have many colors, textures, small elements, and details to look at and discover, creating an exciting and engaging observer experience. Another thing I value highly in my work is repurposing materials. Most of my large-scale work includes unique materials I have found in my environment that would no longer have a use or home without being implemented into my work. I feel that this reuse of materials is not only important in a less-waste mindset, but it also breaths new and unique life into the materials and the work I am implementing them into.
Open Access
Katie McNaught: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) McNaught, Katie, artist
The artist's statement: My relationship with my family, my heritage, and my own past life are very complicated. Common themes that made an appearance throughout my formative years include divorce, abuse in every sense of the word, purity culture, and general religious trauma. I feel like my childhood and teenage years were stunted in many ways as a result of the actions of my family and the things I had to see and live through while I was still a developing kid, like I had to grow up much sooner than everyone around me. I'm painting my upbringing and familial ties to be somewhat of a nightmare (sometimes it definitely was), but I also had a fairly normal childhood and family dynamics in many ways, and have a lot of nostalgia for the things missing from my past or that were severed from me later in life. And while I still dread going to family get togethers because of the dinner table conversation, I still love my family, and I still see a lot of strength and beauty in their lives. Work with fibers has been a common theme throughout the women on my mom's side as a means of survival and expression. I learned to sew from my grandma, and crochet from my great grandma. My grandma made my mom's clothes as a kid as well as her bridal veil. My great grandma crocheted us baby blankets, stuffed animals, and worked in a sewing factory in the early 1900s. Her mother before her sewed quilts made out of depression-era flour bags the we still have in our house. The matrilineal passing of knowledge and skill has been something that's been present throughout many aspects of my life and manifests strongly within fibers. The subjects of matriarchy, family lineage, and the concept of heirlooms and hereditary passing are common themes that appear throughout my work in many different forms. My work varies widely in composition, materials, and techniques used, but there's a strong emphasis on embroidery and sewing throughout many pieces. My emotions relating to my family, religion, and marriage are complex and conflicting. Making art that explores these different aspects helps me to come to terms with the past, heal, and process my feelings in different ways.
Open Access
Morgan Rosebrock: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Rosebrock, Morgan, artist
The artist's statement: Over the last four years I have learned so much about myself and my identity not only as an artist but as an educator. On this journey the connection between myself, my peers, my family, and my students have been everything. When times would get tough these groups of people were the ones that got me through it and my fiber work began to reflect that. Even when it did it never felt completely right or like that was my art and what it should be. I never saw my art going to galleries and being shown and off limits and then being stored somewhere to only be seen every once in a while. It wasn't until I made a set of kitchen towels for a project that I realized that function was missing from my connections. Growing up I practically lived in my parents' small business and I was fascinated with my father's studio. Instead of going to college my father took up an apprenticeship with a master goldsmith and mastered the trade to become one himself. So, every day I would watch him create these beautiful pieces of jewelry that had meaning to the people who received it and to the people who gave it. Once I realized that my own practice was missing a deeper personal connection to other people, I finally felt like my art had purpose. With this new insight I began to create art not only with the purpose of use and to be functional but for it to be meaningful and intimately personal to the person whom it belongs to. I want to create objects that people can create their own personal connections and memories through their uses. During this exploration of personal use, I found that texture went hand in hand with this guided various exploration. Ultimately, I landed on something that gets drilled into our heads about children and education. If we make learning personal and pertinent that's how we get through to students and they learn best. My goal as an artist and an educator is to create art that is personal and pertinent to the viewer and is something that they can find use through and give that object life. I want my dish towel to be there when you bake Christmas pie and blankets to be what brings comfort to people at their lowest. Those personal connections are everything.
Open Access
Mak Tucker: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Tucker, Mak, artist
The artist's statement: Through material, I explore my own very personal experience with queerness and gender expression. Growing up I developed an aversion to things that are seen as girly and feminine because of my own struggle with gender, and feeling wrong as a woman, the gender I was assigned at birth. Through more thorough investigation of my own identity, I have been able to settle into a more comfortable understanding of myself as a nonbinary individual. I have come back to societally feminine materials with an understanding of how they relate to my experience being genderqueer and knowing that I can love feminine things and express myself through their use without subscribing to their association with womanhood. In my work I include things like pearls and beads and integrate soft colors and imagery to create objects that express my tastes in a way that is in my own control. Through this, I can make new associations for these materials that are disconnected from expectations of femininity. I use imagery of the body in my work to discuss discomfort and alienation from the self, as well as the successes and failures of the physical form in representing the internal self. The body holds our place in the physical world and plays a part in expression and how others view us. This creates a complicated relationship between the internal and physical self, especially when it feels as though the body is not an accurate representation of our internal experience. It becomes difficult to treat the body kindly when it is something that causes frustration, loss of control, and in some ways doesn't feel like your own. In my work I investigate the symbolism of the body in representing emotional experience, and anxieties surrounding the way it fails us and the ways we fail it. The subject of my work often deals with longing, despair, overwhelming emotion, and loss of control. I explore these themes through integration of narrative and character. Fiction, I believe, is often better at expressing truth than reality. I think it is easier to experience emotion and understand difficult feelings in a real way when seeing them through an invented narrative that is disconnected from the complications of reality. These emotions are felt very deeply, and I include fantastical elements in my work to portray the experience of this feeling more accurately.
Open Access
Heather Matthews: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Matthews, Heather, artist
The artist's statement: Reflection, reverence, relationship—Again and again, these underlying themes rise to the surface in my work. - Reflection on my experiences as I engage with my environment, people around me, and ideas - A reverence for beauty, whimsy, and hope in the everyday. - Above all, engaging in relationships with ourselves and each other. My values and beliefs are made tangible in my creations. At this moment in time these values and beliefs feel challenged by the unrest of a worldwide health pandemic, our culture's reckoning with race and bias, and the questions around our political leadership. Along with that is my slow transition out of art school and into a new career that feels more aligned with my present life goals. For comfort and consistency, I turn to making things. The making becomes a meditative practice on this moment of personal and global transition, a search for hope and beauty, and an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. My process engages many media, though primarily I create works in fiber and drawings in charcoal or graphite. The pure pleasure I take in the softness and analog quiet of fiber art has instilled my conviction that I can use the medium to communicate. Meanwhile, I regularly turn to other media to expand my ideas and explore multi-layered ways of expression. Just as a writer must read to improve her craft, I insist on regular involvement in the art community as an avenue for enhancing my art practice. I take annual pilgrimages to major art centers in order to see master works in person, I pore over art books and visit local artists in their studios. Artists who inspire me include Alice Neel, Judy Chicago, Jennifer Moore, Shan Goshorn, Kehinde Wiley, Barbara Gilhooly, Anne Bossert, Jan Carson, Jenny Seville, Theaster Gates, Eric Fischl, Bisa Butler, and Hung Liu, just to name a few. Most recently, I have practiced letting go of expectations by giving in to on-the-loom lessons, studying color and texture, and simply putting more hours into both weaving and drawing without intention of a particular final outcome. These activities push me to learn more about myself and ways of making in ways that surprise me and enrich my pieces.
Open Access
Sienna Bosch: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Bosch, Sienna, artist
The artist's statement: My work seeks to understand and give value to the individual as it becomes a part of the whole. In weaving, I'm drawn to the process of using thousands of individual strands of yarn to create a whole. So often, as a part of the human experience, we think about major events that happen in our lives. My intent is to bring importance to each moment in the evolution of life, just as I bring value to the individual strand. I work to incorporate a sense of time through a variety of forms. Life has a great deal of uncertainty, but it's important to think about the paths we have already created. Through this, I work to create a path or timeline like form, that reflects upon history, time, and evolution. Each of my weavings is made up of hand-dyed yarn using natural dye methods. I use a variety of processes, however I always seem to come back to rust dye. This process uses rusty objects to develop patterns and color on textiles. Textiles innately have a sense of fragility. Rust dyeing yarn pushes this to a new level. It compromises the integrity of the yarn, allowing for change and deterioration over time. Throughout our lifetime, our past memories begin to fade, however there is still value in those moments of time. While yarn and fabric are malleable in their natural state, metal has a presence of strength and stability. This metal dictates the movement of the weavings while they maintain their softness. The fabric works to portray this history, while the metal creates structure throughout it.
Open Access
Shay Trettin: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Trettin, Shay, artist
The artist's statement: My artwork is a combination of mediums: printmaking, illustration, traditional drawing, sculpting, and textile arts. Using these different mediums my work confronts the subject matters of our natural world: nature, life, and death are the three main subjects I explore through my art. I like to play with our society's morbid concepts of these topics. Death is a part of life, and to come to terms with that is the first step to truly being alive. Skulls, bones, and plants are common motifs throughout my works. All these subject matters are intricately related to one another and through my art I try to create a conversation between them. Over my lifetime I have acquired many plush pillows. I have always been intrigued by the simplicity of some, and the complexity of others. The stitch patterns, the softness of the material, the firmness of the filling. All these things were, and still are, something I wanted to understand at a level more than just studying them. I enjoy the idea of a large-scale version of these plants. While keeping a fun and soft demeanor, I wanted to bring the rawness into play by using hand stitching methods and veering away from a sewing machine. Historically weavings and tapestries are used to memorialize or commemorate, and I felt that this would tie well together with my plushes and the route I've found myself on with my current works. Within my weavings I found solace in the complex patterns and repetition, often getting lost in myself without getting lost in my thoughts. In the spring of 2019 I tried my hand at a double weave pickup. Being face to face with death on many occasions through different experiences I bring out my longing for life throughout my work. I try to create a playful, yet serious, dialogue about mortality within my creations. Death is a loss of life, and to me that can come in many forms. From the death of a loved one to the death of a past self and past ideals, no one can escape death. "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."-Mark Twain.
Open Access
Hannah Van Belkum: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Van Belkum, Hannah, artist
The artist's statement: My work explores how photographs act as a capsule of memory, story, and relationships. I examine the ideas of the intangibility of memory versus the physical proof of a memory captured in a photograph. I spend time studying the photos and creating narratives around the subjects. I look at the connections between the known photographic permanence and the unknown unreliability of memory. I spend hours in a meditative fibers practice, focusing on a representation of a memory and honoring the moment with my time. My work acts as a remembrance of who we have been through the documentation of photographs. Creating my mom's portrait in fabric honors her passing down a love of fibers to me and celebrate the person that she has been throughout her life. She has acted as a source of inspiration but ultimately, she is just a person. As I get older, I want to understand how my mom as a person shaped who I knew growing up. I pour hours upon hours of stitch work to recreate photos of my parents. Each piece, made up of over 7,500 stitches, creates a precious intimacy with their story of years together and displaying how our lives stitched together through relationships. They reflect intimacy in relationships through the time spent stitching. Working with these photos is a way for me to conceptualize my parents as people beyond their status as my parents. I speculate about what their experiences meant to them and how their stories can call to us. We build connections with one another that transcend direct personal connection - we resonate with one another.
Open Access
Brieanna Hirsheimer: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Hirsheimer, Brieanna, artist
The artist's statement: My work in fibers displays two very distinct approaches. My first discipline as an artist was painting, and when I began working in fibers, I struggled with bringing my 2D thoughts into 3D through fiber. I had difficulty finding a way of bringing illustrative, graphic-looking subject matter into fibers. As a 2D artist, I slowly began creating these larger than life, cartoon-like vegetables in the 3rd dimension. This body of work brings the digital realm into the real world, with bold outlines and bright colors. These pieces walk the line of playful and methodical, creating an illusion of 2D in 3D. Once I began delving deeper into this area of work, I noticed I wanted to try a more traditional approach. I wanted to weave, however I am not keen on using the loom, so I simply decided to weave but off the loom. These off-loom tapestry weavings are fairly large, and are comprised of hundreds of knots that become mindless as muscle memory takes over. These pieces are inspired by specific memories from my childhood. The color palette and materials I use are reminiscent of the feeling I have of running around in my grandmother's garden (Thompsonville, MI, 2019), or sitting on the coffee table of my childhood house (604 Dexter St., 2018). Each piece is a window into my life, the endless months it takes to complete these weavings allows me to reconnect with my childhood in a mindless yet mindful way.
Open Access
Joanna Hanneman: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Hanneman, Joanna, artist
The artist's statement: My work in fibers has become a means of self-reflection and discovery after the passing of my father during the summer of 2019. My process is working towards giving a physical vessel to the feelings of grieving and conveying to the viewer how this experience has affected both my current mentality, as well as how I have been able to process the memories that linger in my father's absence. I am constantly playing with concepts of duality, convolution, and repetition as a way to create a connection between my work and those whom are viewing it. Through the use of my own original writings, I strive to share an intimate portion of myself with the viewer, allowing them to also take part in processing these thoughts and ramblings which have affected my current state. Through art, I believe that we are given a platform to create a dialogue about various topics, social issues, and storytelling traditions. However, we are also given the same platform to create a dialogue between the ancient traditions of the medium we choose, and that of its contemporaries today. Continuing this dialogue is extremely influential to not only the art world as a whole, but my individual practice as well, as this concept is keeping me grounded and making me conscious to the influential power of art making. This also has kept me aware of the impact it can have on other individuals' lives, whether they are partaking in the practice or simply viewing from afar. There is something very beautiful and raw about these traditions and communications that become available through the work of fibers within many western and non-western cultures, and I feel truly honored to be able to work, study, and create as a contemporary in the field.
Open Access
Tristan Lee: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Lee, Tristan, artist
The artist's statement: Plastic Wastelands encompasses my perspective on current environmental issues depicting oil fracking, water pollution, and an overall sense of fear in abstracted sculptural forms. My use of polypropylene fibers in fine, complex weaving structures allows me to relate the idea of decay within our environment to any viewer - the language of textile is universal. While my art reflects my morbid and cynical nature, it also works to change the perspective of the audience by inviting any viewer to the conversation of human-induced climate change.
Open Access
Taylor Landry: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Landry, Taylor, artist
The artist's statement: Often, I find myself stopped in the street, observing how perfectly composed the caution tape floating in a leaf strewn puddle over a break in the curb appears. What conspired for everything to come together in this exact moment? Chance happenings and the passing of time effortlessly arrange materials around me into complex compositions that inform my work. The splatters, scratches, and scattered debris silently decorating my environment inspire how I use dye, stitch, and found objects. The act of weaving individual threads into a unified cloth serves as a metaphor for how the tapestry of what makes us human is woven together with endless interconnecting strands of memory, emotion, relationships, and experiences. I weave to illuminate small moments and observations. I embroider found object collages and instant photographs of my everyday surroundings as a way to stitch together the untold narrative with the obvious and tangible and to delight in the random arrangement of our universe. Music and lyrics fuel my soul in a way that no other thing can, a thread so permanently entwined in the cloth of my own identity, fundamentally altering the way I perceive the world. For this body of work, I chose to honor the music that has impacted my identity most by composing titles inspired from song lyrics by the band, Modest Mouse. Provoked by my observations of the growing and decaying world around me, sparked by the fascination of how all things come together, and fueled by the words, sounds, and textures that fill my space, I construct in needle and thread a diary of my experience and identity. I expand and evolve small fragments of my surroundings to invoke the whole - landscapes of humanity.
Open Access
Erin Bolte: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Bolte, Erin, artist
The artist's statement: I create work that draws on the historic traditions of fiber art while pushing towards forms that ease the ennui. Every piece starts as a series of strings that build up with intention over time fusing together to create a form. During the creation process a constant conversation takes place between myself and the piece. It talks, I listen. Although I am the artist I am not in lead of the conversation. I push and pull and manipulate and question until the work before me emits a feeling of quiet confidence telling me that it is exactly what it needs to be. Fibers allows me to remain within my work long after it's created. My epithelial cells are forever nestled dead within the threads of my work. The needles that pierce fabric also prick my fingers. The sweat of my hands permeates the cloth. This is my language and this is how I speak the loudest.
Open Access
Maddie Shackelford: capstone
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Shackelford, Maddie, artist
The artist's statement: There used to be an uncomfortable tension between art and craft. That pressure has since dissipated and been replaced with a new tension - that between art and design. Arguably art and design have different objectives, however I am interested in how they can be the same. Design is becoming less and less about simply displaying information in a visually stimulating way, and more about user experience, empathy and psychology. Being interested in both Fiber Art and Graphic Design, I want to explore how that user experience can be heightened by art, and how design can inspire and grow from roots founded in art. Because design is sometimes put in a category outside of art I explored this perceived dichotomy between art and design in a recent project. I created a brand and product packaging experience that was extremely elegant, tactile, and gave importance to the experience of opening or unwrapping a purchased product. The piece was about anxiety so I wanted to ease anxiety not just with the products within, but in the packaging experience as well. I did this by including soft and textured embroideries in the lids of the products. Does their inclusion in packaging mean that they are no longer art? I think not. I believe that their existence in the packaging makes the packaging more fine art like. Design and fiber must work in tandem to elevate each other. When I am creating from fiber the focus of my design is both visual and tactile. Fiber is very visual and can be graphic, but it also begs to be touched. When I am working on a wall piece I primarily think about where it can be hung, how it can be hung, and how light will interact with it. Texture, color, and shadow are all important design elements that go into a piece intended display on a wall. My studies of design and design thinking have caused me to gravitate to objects that are clean, neat, have ample breathing space, employ angular shapes and lines, and also have a pleasing flow. I prefer soothing color that calms a weave structure that might be busier. It is in my nature to want to clean up messes, so my Fiber Art work is never messy, never a thread out of place. On the opposite side, fiber has a long history in craft and function. When I make something intended for use in a home the design elements have to change. Form, color, texture, and shadow are still important, however it is more important to me to make sure the functional needs of the user are met. For example, can it be machine-washed? Will dye fade or bleed? Does it pill over time? Can it take some abuse? Is it soft, textured, and pleasant to touch? Even though functional pieces are still fiber art, it is important to me that the owners of the objects I make can use them without fear or hesitancy. I want to give people something they will use and love and pass on to someone else. I want to make precious things that are precious because they are well crafted and beautiful, not because they mean something to me specifically. That's not to say that my work is not imbued with meaning, meaning just isn't the most important part to me. Pieces with heart, made with soul, conviction, and reason tend to be more beautiful than something mass-produced. I think this is because our creativity comes from God, and when we are exercising our creativity and combining it with emotional intelligence we can make beautiful things. For me Fiber Art is an act of worship. It is using the creativity and ability that God gave me. I am still unsure of whether I want the subject of my work to be faith. But if not, the process will always be¬ a worshipful practice for me.