Cast a Circle to counter the White Cube
Place cherished objects and thoughts around the studio peripheries, for the margins are often the most entrancing places. Choose favored poems, pictures, and artwork from treasured energies. Install something cozy and restful, remembering that rest is a radical act for bodies the world resists. Add crystal magic for a little extra dynamism: rose quartz for more heart, black tourmaline as a protection charm, amethyst to permeate the imperceptible, and a crystal cluster for interdependent and collaborative habitats.1
Set Intentions and Gather Materials
Set intentions for the not yet known sculptures and intertwined, rhizomatic compositions.2 Let process and material sensitivity be your guide. Cycle through feelings and intuitive impulses, research and collecting, somatic and haptic feedback. Gather materials and processes: craft and beauty store supplies, hardware and found objects, textile manipulations, and three-dimensional patterning techniques.3 Accumulate affects and experiences, stories and conversations, phrases, words, and texts. Let materials lead to sensory responses and responses to more gathering.4
Draw a Dyebath for Color Allure
Sprinkle some salt. Steep tannic acid and ferrous sulfate to make mesmerizing shades of grey. Mix a splash of neon to unsettle a haze. Blend royal blue and petal pink to blur gendered dimensions and conjure otherworldly, periwinkle planes. Use vessels of heated water to summon hues from the depths of plant pits, leaves, and skins.5 Gently tend to the array of pigments coming forth. Admire the variety of shades and textures that emerge, defying chromophobia and the dominant culture’s historically cautious color rules and restraints.6 Submerge porous matter and bless your sheathings.
Stitch, Wrap, and Mend
Sew rope after rope between layers of cotton for protective coverings—both unruly and aligned. Craft bespoke cloth cuttings, shaping opulent figures and diverse, luxuriant forms. Wrap plenty of cords with fabrics cut precisely at forty-five degrees, thus ensuring maximum fluidity.7 Embroider hundreds of silicone dots with flowing, witchy strands. Needle-punch skeins of velvet and wool into the interstices between warp and weft—continually extending towards the pauses and openings. Allow esoteric symbols to materialize from quilted, soft layers, reminding us of the mysteries and all that is felt but unseen. Weave nets and knots into cosmic planes.8 Contemplatively stitch threads and beads—embracing as above, so below and the interconnectedness of all things.
Dress, Reveal, and Transform
Cover stiff armatures with new layers of softness. Gently remove superficial coatings from shiny, inflexible surfaces, exposing the subtle luminosity beneath. Methodically interlace rows of thread into fiber, submerging and emerging every two inches, ultimately cinching together for Exquisite, Elizabethan-style pleats.9 Ruche and stitch stacks of tulle strips, using the rhythm to sync breath and take stock: crown, eye, throat, heart, plexus, sacral, root.
Cover, Conceal, and Support
Mist coats of velvet onto everyday surfaces, fashioning invisibility cloaks that shield and obscure detection.10 Transform concealed supports—like rug mats, gutters, and dollies that are typically undervalued and disregarded—into visible pieces that expose and delight in the support structures underneath.11
Let the Work Unfold
Let one component organically point to the next, continually questioning and adjusting as you proceed. Embody the rituals and processes; slow down, listen, and attend; feel the hybrids seeping in and rippling outward. Observe the relationships between objects, bodies, and atmospheres, noticing what is flowering and circulating between. Consider the details and particulars collectively. Remembering that we are, and always have been, part of the sacred fabric of everything.
Works Cited
1 House of Intuition has a thorough crystal encyclopedia: http://www.houseofintuition.com.
2 Deleuze and Guattari define a rhizome as a horizontal, non-hierarchical model for culture that emphasizes trans-species connections, and working together to form multiplicities.
3 The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff and the Pattern Magic series by Tomoko Nakamichi are comprehensive guides.
4 The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin reimagines dominant hero narratives, and instead highlights gathering, recipient vessels, and things that hold and carry.
5 Botanical Colors is an excellent source for dye books, supplies, and lectures: http://www.botanicalcolors.com.
6 Chromophobia by David Batchelor gives an aesthetic account of Western culture’s fear and prejudices of color in art and design. He posits that color has been devalued and seen as superficial by much of the Western art canon, and that this is largely due to associations made with groups that have been historically othered and marginalized.
7 Cutting fabric on the bias, the forty five degree angle between warp and weft, creates stretch and flexibility from non-stretch fabrics.
8In her book Textiles: The Whole Story, Beverly Gordon writes the word Tantra means to weave, Sutra means thread, and Yantra means loom. Weaving, spinning, and other fiber arts have many associations with various myths and goddesses: https://medium.com/@sundaywhite/weaving-spinning-how-fiber-is-rooted-in-the-myths-around-the-globe-ba08dc728bae.
9 Rebecca Solnit defines the Exquisite as, “The Exquisite–a cultural framework for the aesthetic of unimproved conscious female bodies.” She continues, “The Exquisite operates in this zone where what is conventionally considered most beautiful–the female body–and what is conventionally considered most repulsive-also the female body–intersect.” Queen Elizabeth I embellished her garments with large and lavish pleated fabrics to strategically take up more space in the male-dominated realm she navigated.
10 Barbara Pickett, velvet weaver extraordinaire, writes about velvet double plush—face to face woven velvet—and its uses in WWII to fight Hitler’s regime. Double plush velvet, coined “camouflage cloth” was used as an anti-radar covering to shield equipment and machinery, thus protecting and preventing detection from Nazi aerial surveillance.
11In her piece Support Structures Celine Condorelli writes “Support Structures is a manual for what bears, sustains, props, and holds up. It is a manual for those things that encourage, give comfort, approval, and solace; that care for and provide consolation and the necessities of life. It is a manual for that which assists, corroborates, advocates, articulates, substantiates, champions, and endorses; for what stands behind, underpins, frames, presents, maintains, and strengthens.” https://celinecondorelli.eu/text/support-structures/.
Emily Ryan Stark is an artist and bookworm from Western Montana. Her pieces explore the interplay between esotericism, gender studies, and ritualistic craft practices. She received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a BS from the University of Oregon, and a BA from the University of Montana. She was awarded a 2023-2024 Windgate Artist Fellowship and Creative Research Grant from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. Recently, she has been an artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and Open AIR Montana. Stark has participated in numerous exhibitions and served as a Visiting Professor of Fiber at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Skidmore College, and the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State University. As an INFP daydreamer, she is drawn to the surreal, the strange, and the mysterious. She is an Aries Sun, Cancer Moon, and Cancer Rising Sign.
Stark engages in a process-focused practice that emphasizes craft and detailed surfaces. Her work is rooted in fiber and consists of soft sculptural objects, garments, and woven structures. Her whimsical pieces explore inner landscapes, intuition, and embodied ways of knowing. Immersed in the tactile world of textiles, and the slow and meditative act of sewing, each stitch becomes a ritualistic gesture representing the “as above, so below” concept. She envisions portals into underworlds and otherworldly realms, microcosms that reflect macrocosms, and symbols representative of the subtle and unseen forces permeating our world. Stark is influenced by occult and contemplative practices, glamour magic, science fiction, and gender theory. She examines the ways in which we experience materials—both in a felt sense, and as complex carriers of histories, and how the systems and norms we are entangled in influence our emotions, relationships, and attachments.
she/her/hers https://www.emilyryanstark.com
