Socially Engaged Projects
In my social practice, relational and participatory work, I typically use the medium of textiles to bring people from different backgrounds and communities together in conversation and cultural exchange. Individually and as part of my artistic collaboration Feral Fabric (with Amanda Walters), I have worked with a wide variety of individuals including students, the elderly, activists, the homeless, and people with disabilities in California, Poland and Berlin. Identity, representation, cultural exchange and social justice are always at the center of this work.
The Trzepak
A social sculpture and workshop-based project about community, place, and imagination. 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. Because of Covid, Feral Fabric developed a Sew & Mend DIY Kit that was distributed through 2022. 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
Textile Workshops
I have led workshops and small participatory projects using textiles as a primary medium since 2015 in California, Łódż (Poland), and Berlin. From 2018-2022 I also co-led many backpatch, banner, quilt, and wearable making workshops as part of my collaboration Feral Fabric with artist Amanda Walters. Feral Fabric led workshops throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including art spaces such as Berkeley Art Museum, NIAD Art Center and Southern Exposure, with unhoused communities, and as pop-up street events in support of gay pride, workers’ rights, and immigration reform.
2018-2023
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