Featured Projects:
The Trzepak
A social sculpture and workshop-based project about community and place. Łódż, Poland.
A trzepak (CHEH-pock, carpet-beater) is a monument to a communist past that still exists in the urban landscape of many formerly communist countries and regiions. The trzepak was a place where the private and public met.
In this project, I led a diverse group of participants through six textile workshops, crafting fifteen large floor cushions to be used as seating and conversation corner. These reflected their makers as well as Polish folk art and craft traditions. The project evolved to also include erecting a trzepak in the community’s courtyard.
2023
Story Quilts
with Unhoused Communities
FERAL FABRIC
This project archived participants’ individual narratives and stories of temporary communities to gain visibility for housing rights in the San Francisco Bay Area. Feral Fabric later developed a Sew & Mend DIY Kit that was distributed throughout 2022 in response to the Corona pandemic. The kits contained everything recipients needed to express themselves through a textile project, and doubled as tools to repair clothes, tents, or anything else made of fabric.
2019-2022
> More work as Feral Fabric
Project Archive
Quiet Time: String Games
This project is centered around string figures - a game which arose independently in indigenous communities all around the world. Participants experimented with string figures in the ambience of a simple sound and light installation; we filled the screen with shadows, projecting our own experiments and imperfect stories.
2024
Meeting around the tablecloth
We drew on the traditional form of the tablecloth, the domestic and gendered associations of embroidery, and the unknown story of the cloth’s original owner to guide conversations about identity, memory, place, and the things that are important to us now.
Looking at tradition vs. what we choose to do and how we respond to and reinterpret these traditions, we made safe and exploratory spaces together, which are grounded in shared craftwork, conversation and exchange that could also bring people outside of the Zusa residency into the circle.
2024
We Can Be Heroes:
A Cape Making Workshop in Berlin
This workshop was held in Berlin as part of the public art festival 48Hrs Neukölln, on the festival’s theme of play as a metaphor for social life, rules, and roles. I provided sewing tools, fabrics, and an exploratory space for participants to play with identity by making and wearing capes and creative garments. Participants experimented with, altered, and combined these materials into capes, then wore their creations out into the city.
2023
Berkeley Art Museum
Back Patch Workshops
Feral Fabric led Back Patch workshops twice in Berkeley Art Museum – initially in person in 2018 and then virtually through Zoom in 2021. Feral Fabric led back patch workshops both virtually and in person hosted by art organizations including NIAD Art Center, Southern Exposure, and Scrap Creative Reuse as well as Figment Art Center.
Read about the first Back Patch Workshop at Berkeley Art Museum >
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2018, 2021
Berkeley Art Center
Community Snake Banner, The Workshop
Feral Fabric distributed and mailed craft kits to participants, then led a virtual workshop. Participants created elements that were combined into the shape of a snake: a symbol of regeneration. The finished 30’ long banner was exhibited outside the Art Center, The accompanying video The Workshop was shown through a window.
This project was commissioned by Berkeley Art Center.
> See more on the BAC website
> Check out The Workshop video
> More work as Feral Fabric
2020
Banner Workshop
at Oakland Pride Parade
Early on, Feral Fabric led free workshops as Pop-up and street events. This included a banner-making workshop at the Oakland Pride Parade and in support of workers’ rights at May Day. Through Sunday Streets, Feral Fabric also led a series of textile-based workshops focused on community pride in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, Mission, and Western Addition neighborhoods.
> More work as Feral Fabric
2018
Między Nami / Between Us
This free-hanging textile panel is based on Polish folk paper cutouts called wycinanki. It hangs low to the ground, frames space in new and interesting ways.
< Approximately 120 x 360” (10 x 30’)
Shown as part of the final MFA Exhibition at California College of The Arts. San Francisco
2016
Flag Zine
In this plein-air participatory artwork, each person was given a textile object that they could use to alter their perception of and experience in the immediate desert landscape. Each object consisted of an “arm’s length” of translucent neon fabric, sandwiched between simple chipboard covers. Participants experimented with looking through the zines and eventually worked together to form a structure by entwining the fabric together.
2015