Artist Access Grant

My goal is to develop a deeper understanding of how to unify fiber and wood both technically and societally. This way, I will be able to utilize each medium's distinctive properties to help my work better create moments of comfort, wonder, and curiosity compared to when I was primarily working with wood. This project will also support my deep desire to create a more accessible craft community regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, or socioeconomic status by presenting these two separated mediums with a common connection point. I hope to successfully create objects that would require those who only have woodworking or fiber craft knowledge to further study and pursue other mediums if they were to attempt to complete the project on their own. To gauge whether or not I achieved my goal, I will share my completed pieces with other craftspeople and interview them. I will ask them the following questions: Do you have the skills to complete this project with a brief overview of the processes used to create the project? If not, what technical skills would you need to develop to complete this project? I will use this data and begin to modify one of the completed projects into a class curriculum that can be a proposed class at maker spaces and craft institutions in the future. In writing this curriculum, I will demonstrate that I have developed a deep enough understanding of wet felting and weaving to begin independently incorporating these crafts into my personal work.