Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

I’m interested in what my hands can do. We are spectacular tools. Much of my recent work is created using a Silver Reed domestic knitting machine, a model originally manufactured in Japan in the 1970s. This machine allows for more efficient fabric creation than hand knitting, as it can work an entire row of loops in a single movement. The model I use employs 200 latch hook needles to hold stitches in place, with a carriage box manually passing across the needle bed to form each row. These needles can be adjusted by hand or manipulated through various control mechanisms, including dials and punch cards, to generate intricate patterns and color variations. I really enjoy the collaboration that happens between hand, body, and simple tools. I like the risk involved – the constant problem solving and adaptation. I like touching raw materials. I like mastering something really complex. I take a great amount of pride in my own workmanship and craft.

I feel that it is my duty as a woman artist to preserve dying craft practices as we slowly lose them to increasingly dehumanizing, mechanized, and commodity based processes. However, I do not entirely reject industrial methods; rather, I engage with them selectively, sourcing materials from within these systems. My work is about surrendering to the fetishistic nature of material culture and discovering inventive ways to transfigure found materials, allowing the forms I meticulously craft to demonstrate, extend, and exploit their potential.

What are your works primarily made from and how do you think about material? Do you have a specific process in terms of conceptualizing materiality?

I like to be really slutty and opportunistic when it comes to materials. Most of the materials that I end up using for the work are mass-produced. I’m searching out a latent possibility in things that are part of the everyday. A big part of my process involves amassing a collection of materials to draw from. One of the main questions I ask myself is: How do I playfully honor the materials/objects that come into my life?

My latest work is made from deadstock acrylic yarns sourced through eBay. These yarns are industry castoffs, and I work with whatever colors I happen to find. While I’m not yet certain what larger patterns will emerge, I believe that, over time, the color trends will inevitably reflect something about our present moment. 

With some projects, I’m more brazen in my material appropriation. Years ago, I did a series of works which started from a collection of handmade, mostly crocheted pillowcases and doilies that I kept finding in thrift stores. When I would find something like this I would think to myself, ‘Why would anyone in their right mind, throw away something so glorious?’ I let myself get overly-romantic and imaginative. I started experimenting with hanging parts of them off of my knitting machine and making appendages. As I started intervening, I became really curious about the person with whom I was collaborating. Some incredible artist from another generation sat in her home and painstakingly made this object. Who was she? What went through her mind as she made this thing? Traditionally, many domestic objects like this are given as gifts, so who was the object for? Did she see herself as the artist that I see her as? AND how did the object end up in the thrift store, which is where people put all the stuff they wish would disappear. I believe the meaning imbued in an object by its maker remains dormant until rediscovered by someone who cherishes it, reawakening like a genie in a bottle.

Fibers as a practice and a medium has a lot of history behind it. What does this mean for you?

I tend to connect with materials that feel rooted in everyday life – things that are deeply familiar, tactile, and universally experienced. So, I create work from what’s around me – things that a majority of people have intimate relationships with. Fabric is such a perfect example since most humans are almost never not touching it. Nearly every moment of our lives is spent in contact with it – wrapped in it as we sleep, dressed in it as we move through the world, swaddled in it at birth, and shrouded in it at death. It’s this everywhereness that interests me most. 

Historically, fiberwork has been linked to women’s labor, often dismissed as domestic or secondary to “serious” art. And while I acknowledge and celebrate that history, part of what I love about working with fiber is that, despite its association with a particular gender, it is a material that everyone depends on. It is not exclusive to any one experience. Unlike more esoteric materials like oil paint, fabric doesn’t need to be decoded – it’s already embedded in human experience. That quiet yet constant presence, is what makes it such a powerful material to work with.

What’s it like being a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago? Does this intersect with your practice at all?

For one thing, the kind of artmaking I do can be pretty hermetic. So, the interactive side of teaching probably keeps me from getting too weird. But more importantly, teaching is a continuous dialogue, where all parties are involved in the growth of knowledge. It is a great privilege to participate in an ancient wheel – artists learning from artists. The evolution of art is not the result of a single individual, but a collective, ongoing process where each artist builds upon the work of those who came before them. 

What kinds of things are influencing your work right now?

I still remember the first painting that really moved me. I must have been under 5 years old, and my parents had taken me to a dinner party at their friends’ house. I wandered off to the bathroom, and on the way, I spotted a small painting, hung low on the wall. It was a blocky image of a woman crying. Her face took up most of the support. It made me cry. I still think about it. I guess I’m always trying to make that painting.  

Do you think your work is at all influenced by the current socio-political climate of any particular setting? If so, do you think this is a purposeful decision?

I find this kind of hard to answer. Of course everything is influenced by such things, but artmaking could also just be something to do. It’s about inventing projects and then completing them – like rearranging a sock drawer over and over. Humans need that. We need projects to feel a sense of purpose. And purpose is what keeps us from becoming indifferent to the world. Having a practice, any practice, requires a certain level of investment in life, and I think that kind of engagement naturally extends to broader concerns, including politics.

We’re all totally addicted to the news cycle these days – the palace intrigue of it all. It’s so accessible, so salacious, good vs. evil, and all that. These things take up a lot of my headspace. But is that a “purposeful decision,” as you put it? I’m not sure it feels like one.

What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on?

I’m pretty excited about the recent symmetrical pieces I’ve been making. They involve a couple of simple constraints, but they have opened me up to a new set of technical and compositional problems. Symmetry carries an inherent sense of resolution for me. When something is symmetrical, it feels whole, as if every element is in its rightful place. I find a deep satisfaction in achieving that equilibrium. I construct these works from smaller, modular fabric segments that I produce individually. Once all the pieces are made, I assemble them like a puzzle, experimenting with different arrangements until the composition locks into place. Then, I sew everything together. The process reminds me a bit of those exquisite corpse books with segmented pages that allow the reader to swap different eyes, noses, and mouths to create various faces. I am endlessly interested in this kind of playful form invention and abstraction, where an underlying structure allows for variation and discovery.

Can you speak on your relationship with Chicago at all?

Chicago has been my home for nearly 20 years. I also grew up in and around Milwaukee, which is not far from here. I think the upper midwest is just as good a place as any to live. The primary reason so many artists thrive in Chicago is because of the relatively affordable cost of living compared to other major cities like New York or Los Angeles. It’s a city with a lot of real working artists. Since we don’t have a massive art market, artists here often create opportunities for each other. I was going to apartment galleries (like LVL3!) and basement shows long before I ever visited a commercial gallery or a big music venue. The gallery that represents my work, 65GRAND, actually started as a live/work, artist-run space. Midwesterners are known for being practical and self-sufficient, and the art scene here really reflects that attitude. 

This lack of dependence on a giant market also allows for a certain irreverence and playfulness to flourish in the art scene. The Chicago Imagists are a perfect example of this – embracing psychedelic colors, wacky humor, exaggerated bodily forms, and the grotesque. Anti-establishment movements like this resonate deeply with me and are one of the reasons I decided to study at SAIC in the first place.

How did your interest in artmaking begin?

I like art (in many of its forms) because I’m sensitive and I like having my feelings manipulated. It seems dangerous particularly in a moment when we’re being encouraged to “protect our peace,” “go no contact,” and “create rigid boundaries.” I think experiencing complex emotions might help us develop something like virtue? Or courage more specifically? These experiences often encourage a kind of moral reflection and empathy. I think it’s beautiful to know the full depth of one’s emotional landscape – like sadder than the saddest sad. Have you let yourself go there? Art can be a conduit towards this depth.

The type of artmaking I do capitalizes on my natural abilities. I have always had unlimited patience for detail oriented, physical work. If I weren’t an artist, I think I’d still want to do something that involves manual labor, like working in the trades. I’ve always loved the challenge of drawing. I think my real interest in fabric started because growing up I was always really petite for my age. As a kid, I would sew my own clothes and alter things to fit, and over time, I just got better at it. Then, by complete chance, I landed a job working for a tailor in my early 20s. She mainly did bridal alterations, and looking back, it was kind of a nightmare job, but it gave me a lot of formal training – like learning pattern making and mastering different types of seams and edges. 

There’s something almost pathological about the intense precision and focus artmaking requires – the kind of concentration that demands every ounce of attention. It’s not just about the technique, but a deep and primal coordination between the hands and the mind. In some ways, it’s the most spiritual thing I do, because it’s a ritual and it forces me to reckon with the transience of my body in a way nothing else does.

Interview conducted and edited by Liam Owings