My work is about redemption. I mean that in both a practical and a profound way.

Think about a redemption center where you return your bottles. You bring in something you can no longer use and get some money. And that no longer useable material? Well, it’s quite useable actually, and it will be transformed into something new.

This is the kind of practical and profound redemption I’m talking about.

Weaving as an upcycler means I often use fiber and fabric and clothing that is no longer loved, useful, wearable or wanted. But the RAW material is still good and can still be used to make something beautiful and useful.

I think this matters, truly and deeply. Particularly in the world we live in right now. We may feel our world is “trash” or there is a “trash fire” as the sayings go. We may even feel WE are “trash.” (You may be well aware of the historic rise of suicides in the past two decades.) We may feel we are no longer useful, beautiful, or wanted. (I remember very clearly working with a woman in her 90s. I asked her how I could help her. She said: “Pray for me to die. I am no longer useful in any way.) Or we may feel our hardships, our mistakes, or our unique life challenges can do nothing but drag us down.

These pieces are made from quilting scraps, plastic bags, garbage bags, hay rope, discarded clothing, donated yarn, and rags.

And if I take an old rag, once so pretty in creams and yellows, and cut it into strips and weave with it, blending it with cut strips from a gold foil balloon and bits of 40 year old yarn that was given to me by my step-mother, who once knit (and who is a tremendous artist and painter), it becomes something completely new, full of rich meaning, full of the old but not old.

This is, to me, the essence of redemption. As a practical skill, it keeps things from the landfill. It reinstates value to things, imbues them with renewed purpose.

But the word redeem has many meanings. Restore, to make good, fulfill, to retrieve, to make worthwhile, to free from what distresses or harms.

My weaving is a song of restitution, an ode to the power and beauty of redemption, a love song  to goodness, worthiness and restoration.

Weaving redemption is both practical and symbolic, born out of my own experience and philosophy. In the joy of the colors and the dance of texture, comes the fabric of healing itself.

What is true of the plastic bags, is true of our old hurts. What is true of the clothes that don’t fit, is true of our outdated dreams. If we can make beauty of rags, can we make turn the tides of climate change? Can we use our trash? 

For me, these are not pieces expressing some kind of possibility or potential, but an actuality, a present tense fulfillment. They answer those questions. Each piece is a YES. They are made with this yes and they are made FOR this yes, to share this redemption story with others. And when people say they feel my weaving is joyful, I think it is this they experience. This yes.