Raw wool.

Felt from wool is considered to be the oldest known textile. The National Museum in Copenhagen has preserved caps made of solid felt from the early Bronze Age. They were found in the prehistoric burial mounds of Jutland and North Slesvig and date back some 3500 years. Classical Greek authors mention the use of felt. Specialized workshops for making felt hats and felt gloves were discovered in Pompeii. It predates weaving and knitting. In Turkey, the remains of felt have been found, dating back at least to 6,500 BC.

Raw felted wool has many magical properties including memory. Once wool is felted it can remember its shape and hold it forever. In the spirit of that super power, I use raw wool to conger works about memory and liminality.

Immingrant Yarn Project

“Every once in awhile we come face to face with a situation that shoves us into a sudden and palpable awareness of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the inescapable network of mutuality—that whatever affects one of us directly affects all of us indirectly. Understanding this interconnectedness, even across the greatest gulfs of difference was the genesis of the Immigrant Yarn Project — an attempt at holding a mirror up to humanity and seeing reflected both communion and difference,” Cindy Weil, Lead Artist and Exhibition Curator, Immigrant Yarn Project and Founder and Creative Director, Enactivist

In 2019 in partnership with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy through the Art in the Parks program, the Immigrant Yarn Project was mounted at Fort Point National Recreation Center. It featured knitted and crocheted pieces sent in by over 600 contributors from across the country representing generations of immigrants from every corner of the world—and included contributions from homeless communities, seniors, students, LGBTQ, Native Americans, and even a Former Secretary of State. As lead artist and creative director, Cindy Weil compiled these pieces and created 80 separate unique totemic sculptures to represent the magnificent difference and vital beauty that immigration has always brought to this country. Over 30,000 people visited the Immigrant Yarn Project during its two month run.

Omaha Trees

Like everywhere else during the Summer of 2021, Omaha, Nebraska experienced it’s own extreme weather - 100 mph straight line winds which took out thousands of old-growth trees, including one of my own. Nebraska is the home of Arbor Day, and some of the trees lost in that storm date back to its founding in 1874 when Nebraska was one sprawling treeless plain from the Missouri River to the Rockies. I yarn-bombed a stand of old-growth maples on a busy residential avenue to draw some attention to Omaha’s place in the climate change continuum. I doubt that it changed any minds, but it slowed traffic and made people wonder.