kachinaleigh.com

I started as a wearable fiber artist and am still committed to creating functional pieces. I’m equally interested in altering garments to create objects that reflect as well as defy societal norms and expectations, particularly of women. I am drawn to old garments that show evidence of the hand that created the piece as well as the person who wore it. These indelible marks—stitches, stains, mended holes, and spots rubbed almost bare by continual contact with the body—speak to the hours invested in the making of the garment as well as the years that have passed as it was worn, again and again.

I have also been exploring the use of fiber with other media, and I’m currently working with printmaking media and techniques. I started using pieces of cloth to create monoprints, covering fabrics in ink, destroying their functionality. Color became too distracting, and I began using the press solely for the tremendous pressure it would exert on both the cloth and paper; the resulting works record the interaction of the fabric with the press, implying narratives that are suggestive of violence, loss, and absence. Much like a traumatic event that one did not witness and yet is affected by, the monoprint becomes an echo of the event, a record of something that happened. Both the process and resulting prints are engaging, and much like my previous interaction with the etching press, this process yielded an interesting and unintended object to explore – the flattened piece of fabric.

Of the many mediums I have explored, fiber is the only one in which I enjoy the process as much as the finished product. Narrative is an integral part of fiber media and its ability to reference memory, trauma, and loss are concepts that I continue to explore.