Weaving Lab is a project first created in 2016 that explores the utilitarian, conceptual and social potentials of cloth made in a public space of production.

Social Practice/Public Production

As a public site offering opportunities for tutorials and exploration, Weaving Lab recalls historical models of local production and asks whether access to looms as a social destination might create community and serve as a contemporary analog to the cottage and “fireside industries”i of old. With each public offering of Weaving Lab, we will work to to understand the history of social spaces created for weaving and to contextualize how Weaving Lab aligns with or departs from these models.

Speculative Weaving

Speculative Weaving is the term I have coined to encompass an approach that bridges the divide between craft-based traditions and conceptual work wherein weaving serves as the nucleus of community engagement and the catalyst for broad interdisciplinary explorations. Participants are encouraged to approach the act weaving as an end in itself, while also considering the act in relation to conceptual domains of time, rhythm, meditation, and materiality.

History

In 1915, the University of Wisconsin had a Weaving Laboratory where students learned the craft of weaving in the home economics department. A century later, I created Weaving Lab: Plain Cloth Productions as a public facing site of textile production, exploring the creation of cloth in relationship with inquiries around time, labor, process, rhythm, production, meditation and math-based patterns. The lab ran for the summers of 2016 and 2017 in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery in Madison, Wisconsin.