Sculpture Studio Spring 2010

Project 3: Site, Place, and Installation

Yarn Weaving

The underlying conceptual issue that is the focus of my site-specific project is the interwoven connection between St. Mary’s as a community and the environment. As members of our community know, our school is very environmentally conscious and friendly. One of our main focuses is sustainability. We want to lessen our carbon footprint both in the present and in the long term in order to preserve our environment. With this in mind, I wanted to create a visual representation of our relationship with the environment and nature, which is one of love and great care.

Since the meaning of this sculpture is environmental, creating a site-specific sculpture was most appropriate. What better way to make the essence of nature apparent than to attach the sculpture to nature itself? The environment is the site of my environmentally focused piece.

My weaving included a mixture of yarn, twine, and materials from nature such as sticks, bark, pine needles, pinecones, leaves, dandelions, and weeds. I could have made a weaving using only elements from nature in the weft yarn, and it still would have implied an interwoven connection with the environment. However, I thought that including the yarn added a more humanistic element to the overall piece. The yarn added a man-made quality, bringing to mind images of baskets and clothing that involve the act of weaving. The yarn acted as a representation of the people on our campus, as it was the only man-made element used.

I wanted the colors of the yarn to mimic the colors of nature. I included green, brown, off-white, black, and a yarn that with multiple colors in various shades of red, orange, pink, purple, and blue. I believed this yarn was most significant in representing our campus because it represented colors that we see everyday in the sunsets and in the reflection of the sunsets over the water. The other colors were simply neutrals that could be found in nature anywhere, but were still significant in making the man-made element of the weaving represent nature.

Instead of creating lengthy areas of yarn only, I broke up those sections by weaving in sticks, bark, and peelings from the tree I wove my weaving to, which is a Crape Myrtle. These elements extend past the width of the weaving purposefully. I did not want to manipulate the sticks in such a way that they would lose their natural shape and conform to the man-made element. Instead, the yarn conformed to the natural shape of the wood I used, the weft yarn hugging the sides of it and the warp yarn wrapping around it. The act of the yarn conforming to the sticks is a deeper representation of the way our community cares for the environment. Our school tries not to change the environment, as I tried not to change the shapes of the sticks I used. Rather, I embraced it.

In some areas, I created weavings using only elements from nature, aside from the warp yarn, which was needed to keep the elements together. In these areas, I used branches of the tree as part of the weft; the branches became a part of the weaving, positioned in the same way that I would have weaved any stick into the yarn. Connecting my weaving to the tree so directly was essential. Without the branches there, the weaving would sag and fall apart. This emphasized the importance and necessity of natural elements and how we as humans need it to function properly, just as my weaving needed the branches to function properly.

By simply looking at my weaving, and noticing that elements of nature are woven in with yarn, one could easily pick up connotations about the environment. When one thinks deeper about these connotations, one can notice the visual representations embodied by my weaving.