Fischer describes herself as an artist mostly concerned with process. She prefers to immerse in the ‘doing’, a space that she describes as non-verbal or pre-verbal. Selecting a form is subintentional. Though she prefers natural fibers, the exact twine doesn’t matter, as long as it doesn’t have too much stretch. The knots aren’t specific in identity, though their integrity is critical to structural success. She knots in the same way she discovers her subjects in the landscape: outside of words, wholly intuitive. 

In some works Fischer leaves her cords dangling and fringy. We can perhaps map her route by the fiber’s starts and stops. In these pieces it is the weaving process that features. Other bound rocks mute the evidence of the twining process. The cut ends are carefully woven in, leaving us unsure of the start and the end or how it came to be. These pieces speak more to the stone’s shape. And sometimes Fischer feels the constructed casing doesn’t ‘arrive’ to become an acceptable, finished work. When this happens, Fischer is compelled to cut the casing and release the stone. The exoskeleton sags a bit in the absence of its armature, but the rigor of Fischer’s constructions allows the form to remain. The stone is still powerfully felt.

Earlier works in Fischer’s art practice investigated the curious transfer from weaving to quilting when her female ancestors immigrated to the US. Certain patterns and motifs survived the change in medium, begging the question: are patterns part of our archetype? Primary symbols of identity? These notions intertwined pattern with longing, cultivating Fischer’s desire to immerse in a similar process to gain a sense of be-longing. She has distilled her practice to one of Noticing, Gathering, Considering and Wrapping, employing a kind of found loom, some natural fiber, and an enduring appetite for process to produce these sculptural outcomes.

Like Fischer’s found stones, we are each a product of time and space, sculptural outcomes of the many intersections that lead to our being. Also like the stone, we are always slowly changing form, ever honed by external forces. Fischer acknowledges this universality, joint by joint, link by link, as she rhythmically traverses each path and each pebble, trussing time to space.

To learn more about the work of Laura Fischer visit lauralivingstonfischer.com

How did you arrive at the decision to place figures on top of the cloth background, as opposed to weaving the figures in? 

As I said in the last response, my background before I started weaving was in figurative painting. I studied illustration in college, so I wanted to find a way to bring both art forms together in my work. Weaving the figures into the work would add more time to an already time-intensive process, in addition to not giving the desired effect.

Can you discuss which indigenous African techniques inform your work? 

I incorporate traditional upright loom weaving (Aso-Ofi), woodcarving, and resist dyeing (Adire) into large scale, mixed-media installations. I also create clothing and other textiles, metal, and wood-based objects for photo and performance work. 

What is the concept you refer to: ‘reclaiming ancestral wisdom?’ How did you come to be introduced to this concept, and can you describe your decision to pursue it? 

My interest in learning about the African past began in childhood. It has informed my work for as long as I can remember. This desire to reconnect with this heritage led me to travel to Nigeria to study at the Nike center for art and culture. Having the opportunity to live in Nigeria and learn the history and folklore tied to cotton and indigo helped me reflect on my own experiences and history as an African American. The ancestral knowledge and traditions surrounding these materials in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa were exploited on plantations in the Americas for centuries. 

Conversely, the connections between these industries and African systems of knowledge have been dissociated from us in the diaspora. Cotton and Indigo, crops associated with wealth, prestige, and even medicine, became associated with suffering and toil through the trauma of the transatlantic slave trade. Learning weaving and dyeing, surrounded by cotton plants and indigo bushes, in what once was part of a center for cloth production in the pre-colonial era helped me appreciate the symbolic meaning of what I was learning. Through working with these materials, I reclaim that stolen labor and reconnect with this ancient knowledge. 

Do you have thoughts about your practice which includes more than one medium? What do you access in weaving that is different from painting – and vice-versa?

Weaving is a very meditative practice. It requires patience, focus, and finding a rhythm. It is a dedication to a slow additive process, one that cannot be rushed. Painting is a different experience. As I am a reasonably fast painter, the process isn’t as slow. I am also more of an intuitive painter, whereas weaving, though requiring incredible imagination, is a more systematic and rhythmic process for me. 

Can you speak a bit about the weaving in your work- what does it give you? What and who do you connect to in doing it? How is that different from painting and drawing?

Because of the ancestral connection I have with the weaving tradition that I practice, there is almost a spiritual connection that I have to act. Although I will always have a love for painting and drawing, weaving means something different to me. This tradition’s role in the history of the African Diaspora impacts who I choose to teach it to and the community I am trying to build around these art forms in the United States. I consider weaving on this loom a Black artistic praxis, one that is my inheritance. Being gifted with this knowledge informs my identity in ways that differ from figurative drawing and painting.

To learn more about the work of Stephen Hamilton visit itanproject.com

When Minami decides to add color to a fabric, he sources only natural dyes, and bathes the fibers in a process that uses the milk proteins of plants. The color fixes slowly, sometimes taking months to cure. During this time, the garments or yarns spend their time away from direct sunlight, ripening, so that they can be worn outside and retain their hue. 

Minami begins the process of making a garment by sourcing materials as locally as possible. He prefers plant based fibers with naturally occurring colors, as in unbleached cottons which retain their indigenous greens and browns. These fibers merge unexpectedly into plaids and tartans, but retain their connection to the earth. The resulting cloth is at once evolved design and prima materia. 

While some wearable pieces are a simple draping of a handwoven textile, as in a series of shawls or ‘haori’, fine tailoring also occurs, in the form of precise, three dimensional weavings. This is a process which Minami has developed. Pants and jackets are finely shaped directly on the loom. Minami combines his devotion to natural materials with a deep knowledge of clothing construction and the resulting apparel is a bespoke, lifted landscape. 

To put on a Manonik garment is to be surrounded in the embrace of an artist’s design. The precision in the three dimensional weave accepts our asymmetries, the subtle curvatures of our elbows and shoulders. The garment anticipates motion, draping unpretentious, unvarnished, fiber tendrils emerging. 

This commitment to slowness, to the beauty of careful labor, and to absolute knowing of the origin of the materials is an effort to redirect our futures to a better relationship with our economy and environment. Participating in acquiring and wearing these clothes is a tactile experience which puts us into harmony.

Manonik comes from the words ‘la mano,’ italian for ‘hand,’ and ‘nik,’ three letters from the artist’s name and a word which denotes a person associated with a specified thing or quality. As such Manonik signifies a person whose existence cannot be without the use of hands.

To learn more about the work of Yoshiuki Minami visit manonik.com

outcomes out of the acuity of her attention. Her gestures highlight far more than a leaf’s shape, often illuminating the anatomy of the interior, or creating entirely new geometries. She has been known to immortalize the curvature of how a particular leaf has dried, or to conjoin different leaf species. The medium has proven endlessly fertile. Perpetually amazed by the elaborateness of systems employed by nature and its complex growth patterns, she finds intricacy in laced capillaries. Threadings of veins which carry sustenance through organic forms inspire her to devoted response, a cascade of carefully calibrated stitching engagements with the specific contours of her fallen subjects.

Originally from Germany, Bauer has lived a multitude of professional lives. After studying landscape architecture, she formally trained in industrial and product design modelmaking, which helped her to hone engineering and dexterity down to the tenth of a millimeter. She worked for two decades in London in film and advertising, specializing in miniature and architectural modelmaking. For years she traveled from London to her partner’s home in Cornwall, often bringing back various natural forms.  Once, she was compelled to cover a small found log in crochet, in an effort to hold or contain it. Though Bauer practiced craft in her urban life, she recognized a desire to immerse in the outdoors. Eventually she moved south permanently, and began a full time sculptural practice in collaboration with nature.

A large body of work contends with a leaf’s perimeter. Patterned stitches traverse the exterior, growing more decorative with each concentric ring. The viewer is presented with the surprise of a lace edging on a natural form. Since the invention of this form of needlework, lacemakers have looked to nature as inspiration for the countless patterns found in decorative collars and trims which framed and elevated the faces of the European courts in the 16th century. Bauer’s work is no less laborious, and her decision to embellish something as common as a fallen leaf somehow returns the favor, redirecting the homage from human back to nature.

But it is in the wilder, more unexpected responses that Bauer truly flexes both her craft rigor, and tendencies towards more provocative shifts. A dried leaf on its way back to dust is suddenly sewn into a cube. An interior, scalpeled circle reroutes the leaf’s main artery such that water can no longer pass through. Without cease the works read like fine china. But Bauer is both sublime caregiver and radical surgeon. She is at once preservationist and revisionist. This juxtaposition of extraordinary tenderness with extreme alterations of form give the work an undeniable power.

Going back to that first patched leaf, perhaps Bauer was mending herself, weaving her own life back into a harmonious dialogue with nature, stitch by stitch. Her efforts seem to pay something forward. As we marvel at her choice to spend her hours creating these works, and at the offerings themselves, we are reminded of the duality of the fragility and endurance of nature. Her skillful stitches, wandering across leaf and stem, work their way through us, reconnecting us to our natural roots.

To learn more about the work of Susanna Bauer visit susannabauer.com

What is immediate in this artist’s work is her devotion. In part it’s the fastidious articulation of detail, but it is also her choice of subject. The purposeful recreation of a sliver of bark or a tiny patch of lichen gives us pause. The surprise encounter with something we know, but often overlook, translated into a wholly new material, accentuates its importance.

Perhaps one of the benefits of fiber is its ability to speak to the same haptic receptors in our fingertips as these actual organic forms. We imagine caressing the sculpture, connecting those conjurings to memories of touching moss on a forest floor. We are called back to the time in our lives before walking. Whether we crawled or scooted, we roamed close to the surface, our vantage illuminating only that first micro layer of ground.

Cobbett constructs these forms in utter slowness. Her cadence relates to the rate of growth in some of these species. Lichen, for example, that symbiotic partnership of a fungus and an alga, matures so gradually compared to our human lifespan that its growth evades our perception. Thoughtfully, something in this methodical stitching practice nods its head to the slow expansion of our forest. 

To thread is to pervade. It is to pass continuously through the whole course of something. As a thing, thread is a twisting of filaments, designed to join fabric together. Cobbett’s sculptures thread their way through us, seaming us to landscape. 

To learn more about the work of Amanda Cobbett visit amandacobbett.com