- All around the world,
people make textiles and it's not men or women particularly.
There's different cultural norms of who are the producers.
In our culture,
we have this strange split where industrially
there's tons of men involved in textile production
but domestically,
it's been this other cottage industry.
Like I was saying or sort of home production.
I want to pay homage to that,
to that intelligence, that history,
to that background.
The fact that there were these networks of women and
makers that had to figure it out and
had the ability to make new patterns and
figure out what worked best for them.
I'm really inspired by it.
I think especially being in the School of Human Ecology,
there is a really strong history to home economics.
But I think one of the wonderful things about textiles
and fibers in particular is that
there was this whole utilitarian need,
which I think is a wonderful way of using cloth.
But in the 70s, when mostly women,
primarily women,
were starting to use textiles and fibers for fine art.
So it wasn't men pushing that movement.
There was a lot of painting and sculpture and
fields that were already dominated by men.
But when some of these soft and
domestically-stereotyped materials
became larger than life:
sculptural,
conceptual;
it was able to sort of jump from a utility
to more conceptual in meaning based work.
So I am part of that trajectory, right.
And it is not too far away.
The 70s wasn't that long ago.
I was born in the 70s.
So um... it's a very near history.
So I guess
I'm still working to understand my relationship within that.