Returning to Fiber: Experimentation, Memory, and What I’ve Been Making Lately

Lately, my studio has looked less like a traditional painting space and more like a fiber storm passed through it.

There have been piles of roving wool across the living room floor, handspun yarn draped over chairs, crochet hooks buried under sketchbooks, and experimental vessels slowly taking shape one layer at a time. Some days it feels more like building than painting. Other days, it feels like remembering.

handspun wool & paper yarn, hand dyed

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself pulled deeper into fiber art and textile-based experimentation in a way I honestly didn’t expect.

Even though I earned my BFA in Textile/Surface Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology, so much of my professional career focused on commercial design and later painting. Fiber quietly sat in the background for years — still present, still influencing how I think about texture, layering, movement, and material — but not always at the center of my practice.

Now it feels like it’s resurfacing in a completely different way.

Not polished.

Not precious.

More instinctive.

I’ve been teaching myself techniques through experimentation: wet felting, needle felting, hand spinning fiber, sculptural crochet, stitching, and combining textile processes with my existing mixed media work. I’ve become fascinated by the physicality of fiber — the way it can hold tension, softness, memory, and structure all at once.

Unlike painting, fiber often asks for patience.

carded corridale and merino wool

You can’t always rush it.

You have to build slowly.

You have to let the material guide some of the outcomes.

As someone whose work has always been deeply connected to process and emotion, that has felt important.

Living with CAPS and the long-term effects of a traumatic brain injury has changed the way I physically create work over the years. Traditional methods don’t always cooperate with my body anymore, which has pushed me toward unconventional tools, adaptive techniques, and experimentation. Oddly enough, fiber has opened new doors for me creatively because it allows for flexibility, texture, repetition, and tactile exploration in ways that feel both challenging and accessible.

Some of these newer works feel somewhere between sculpture, textile, and vessel forms.

They aren’t meant to function traditionally.

They’re more emotional containers than practical objects.

"What Stayed" Wet Felted Wool, handspun fiber, crochet, needle felt - 2026

I’ve been especially interested in themes of preservation, softness, resilience, and what remains after transformation. A lot of the work feels connected to memory — how experiences leave residue behind, how materials carry history, and how identity reshapes itself over time.

One of the things I love most about this stage of experimentation is allowing myself to not fully know where the work is heading yet.

There’s freedom in that.

handspun wool and wool & paper yarn

For a long time, I think I felt pressure to have everything figured out before beginning. Now I’m trying to let curiosity lead more often. Some experiments fail. Some accidentally become the starting point for an entirely new body of work.

Honestly, those moments are usually the most exciting.

Recently, I’ve also been incorporating fiber into broader mixed media pieces alongside cyanotypes, stitched elements, painted surfaces, resin work, and found materials. I’m interested in how these mediums speak to each other — how softness interacts with structure, how fragility can coexist with strength.

cyanotype & acrylic painting on muslin, with pieces of my wedding dress. Syanotypes are family photos and family historical documents

A lot of the work still feels deeply tied to my ongoing exploration of texture and emotion, just through a different language.

I don’t really see this as leaving painting behind.

It feels more like expanding the conversation.

And if I’m being truthful, it also feels like reconnecting with a younger version of myself — the one who was always making a mess, pulling materials apart, sewing things together incorrectly just to see what would happen, and falling in love with the process before worrying about the outcome.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately: experimenting, learning, making messes, and following the work wherever it wants to go.

And honestly? It feels pretty good.