Some of the Most Provocative Art is Made with Fibers
Leslie Camhi, The New York Times Style Magazine
March 2018
The ancient Greeks put fate in the hands of three old women, goddesses who spun the thread of life, twisted it to allot each individual a measure of joy or sorrow, and wielded the “abhorred shears” (in the poet John Milton’s phrase) that could cut life short. The Greeks knew something that artists, along with a new generation of “craftivists” (people combining craft with activism), are rediscovering — that fiber (woven, knitted, braided, quilted, crocheted, embroidered) can be an expressive medium, one more powerful, perhaps, for its ubiquity. Textiles, after all, accompany us on nearly every step of life: We are born and swaddled, buried in shrouds; most of us are even conceived between sheets. […]