Open Wabi Artist Residency visits Fiber Arts

Fiber arts were the center of a discussion with two artists-in-residence from Open Wabi Artist Residency, Elizabeth Tolson & Peter Stevens. The artists both explore fibers in their work, and they visited the Denison University’s Art Department to give presentations of their current explorations to the Fiber Arts course.

Denison’s Students learn about Fiber Arts using natural and/or artificial materials. They work in combinations of structural and non-structural materials, creating compositions as images, objects or installations.

Open Wabi Artist Residency Program, located in a 100-year-old factory building in rural Fredericktown, Ohio, offers emerging and established artists the time, space, and environment to encourage growth and experimentation in their practice.

Tolson, based in Brooklyn, New York, is an Expanded Media Artist and Educator whose work explores the boundaries of art, technology, and feminism. Through an alchemy of artistic skills honed during life and scholastic experiences, she brings important social issues front and center and generates real discussion. Challenging group norms through over-representation of societies gender flaws, she draws the audience in with her provocative work.

Steven’s work employs a variety of DIY methods in the studio including tracing, sewing, drawing, and painting that harken back to a way of making things when he was a child—he imagines what materials can become and meticulously composes objects and images that might allow others to imagine and wonder too. Gravitating towards repetitive processes, Steven’s work addresses a kind of ritualistic sense of living in the world—he believes people are prone to habitual behavior, and I appreciate the accumulative, transformative effect of routines in everyday life.