Common Threads
Hailey Walsh
Through an exploration of contemporary and traditional textile practices and personal investigation into material studies such as embroidery, cyanotypes, and sewing this work seeks to unravel the thread of the complex history and future of textile practices as expressions of identity. This work is an investigation of textiles as storytelling, the visualization of relationships through textiles, and how identity and community are established and communicated through intergenerational textile practices. The work focuses on the themes of textiles as women’s work, textiles as a form of catharsis, the role of textiles in preserving cultural identity, and textiles as language.
Unautomated Facial Recognition
This work is an attempt to bridge the digital and physical, and reflect the analog art form of embroidery shaped by digital facial recognition technology. They are a translation of a decorative process into a practical one, which seeks to explore the connections between generations of women within one family.
Common Threads
The Common Threads workshops were a series of simple, fun, guided textile exercises that invited participants to engage with one another and with the act of sewing as a means to forge connections.
Common Threads Workshop Participants
Remix Weaving
These works weave together disparate scenes of wilderness such as a Colorado river and the Atlantic Ocean with scenes from a textile factory, advertisements from Levi’s and other textile industries to create new patterns, abstract images, and new meanings.
Remix Weaving
60 Days of Weaving
60 Days is a visual diary that explores how textiles can serve as a record of time, with a different object from each day woven into a hand-made loom. The objects represent life moments, from the mundane to the major and explore how a narrative is told through objects.
60 Days of Weaving
Objects of Desire
For this work, I asked friends and family to choose one object that represents an aspect of their identity. Together, we then created a cyanotype exposure on fabric from their object that was then sewn into a community quilt. This work is about connection to objects and connection to others.
Interwoven
Interwoven is a self reflective knitting pattern. My goal with this work was to bring a greater awareness to the act of making by incorporating prompts throughout the pattern that encourage the maker to pause and reflect about the experience and significance of working with your hands.