Sep 18

Sep 18 Oriane Stender

May Maani

weaver

Name: Oriane Stender

Studio location: Brooklyn, NY

Website / social links: linktr.ee

Loom type or tool preference: Louet David 2, 8H, because it’s multi-harness, has a sinking shed, and the tie-ups are quick and easy to change.

Years weaving: 10ish this time around (learned about 30 years ago, came back to it about 10 years ago)

Fiber inclination: silk, cotton

Current favorite weaving book: Currently reading Marit Paasche’s book “Hannah Ryggen, Threads of Defiance.” Fascinating history. I don’t actually read a lot of books about weaving. My inspiration comes from all different places. I like to looks at images of pattern throughout different historical crafts and trades.

Contact information for commissions and collaborations: email address

1. How did you discover weaving and was what your greatest resource as a beginner?

I majored in sculpture in college, but was always interested in weaving as a practice with great conceptual and physical integrity. What I mean by that is that while weaving, the weaver creates the surface and the structure simultaneously, rather than decorating an already made surface (like a oil painter does; first there is a woven piece of canvas, then the painter paints on top of it).

2. How do you define your practice – do you consider yourself an artist / craftsperson / weaver / designer / general creative or a combination of those? Is this definition important to you?

I come from a fine arts background, so I’ve always considered myself an artist rather than a craftsperson, but almost anything that you can learn how to do is a “craft.” Painting is a craft, weaving, cooking … I don’t put “crafts” lower down in the hierarchy of the arts.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

I did my first little weavings in an after-school arts-and-crafts class as a child. I was fascinated by it structurally, only later learning more about the history.

4. What is your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished piece? Are there specific weave structures, looms, or fibers that are important to your process?

I like to work warp-faced, basically making a painting on the warp threads, then the weft just comes along and holds those threads together into a flat plane. I call these woven paintings. I’m now experimenting with incorporating the weft more into the design, like with shadow weaves.

5. Does your work have a conceptual purpose or greater meaning? If so, do you center your making around these concepts?

I like to keep a balance between concept and craft (by craft I mean the actual, physical making of the thing). Some work will fall more onto one side of that dichotomy, some more onto the other, but keeping them both active is important to me. If it’s all concept, you might as well just write an essay and not make the thing. But if it’s all craft, a certain part of the mind is not engaged. Just as in every facet of life, we have both mind and body working, or heart and head. I like a person to feel something viscerally and be engaged intellectually when looking at the work. I liken it a bit to yoga, which is a physical workout but your mental faculties are activated at the same time.

Identity politics is very hot right now and as my grandfather was a tailor in the Lodz ghetto in Poland before the second world war, I could say that that connection is central to why I work in textiles, but it isn’t. I don’t feel we should be bound, or even especially influenced, by our familial predecessors; we find or choose our influences. I do feel connected to a long tradition of women working with textile practices throughout history, weaving in particular. Many cultures have important origin myths involving women and thread - particularly weaving - such as Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey, and the Three Fates (who spun, measured and cut a length of thread which determined the life span of every individual). So there is a lot of power and knowledge in the association of women with textiles in history.

6. What is your favorite part of the weaving process and why? What’s your least favorite?

Putting the warp on and threading are my least favorite. It would be great to have an assistant to do that. Everything else I love.

7. Do you sell your work or make a living from weaving? If so, what does that look like and how has that affected your studio practice?

I occasionally sell a weaving, but mostly what I have sold are my woven and sewn money works, and drawings on book pages. My work is in several museum and corporate collections, and those pieces are all work made of money, which is the work that I have shown the most.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

All over the place. More often from patterns I see in the urban environment (architecture, etc.) or history than from other artists. We are so saturated with images that I sometimes feel I have to screen some out. It’s like overload in my brain. I prefer to work minimally, meaning I like to take one idea (or one motif, one pattern) and keep pushing it into many directions. So I often end up producing series of related pieces. I have several different bodies of work, each one started with one idea.

9. What other creatives do you admire – weavers, artists, entrepreneurs – and why?

Windy Chien, because she has taken a very old, functional craft - knot-tying - and turned it into an art form. By blowing up the scale, she takes it way beyond macrame, which it resembles in technique. She also is a model as an artist/entrepreneur. This is (at least) her third career, so clearly she has a real talent for business. A lot of artists, myself included, don’t have that.

Hildur Asgeirsdottir Jonsson, because her work is just astoundingly beautiful. She is very down-to-earth as a person, no nonsense, not pretentious at all, but she turns out these amazing, otherworldly painted-warp silk weavings that are landscape-based, but are also rich abstract compositions that feel at home in several realms. They bring to mind Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Monet, but are truly her own.

Louise Bourgeois, because she just kept doing her work through the decades with an integrity and commitment that I admire. Her sense of community was also important; she held a Sunday artists’ salon for many years at her home in New York, which I went to three times. She was already very old when I started going, and losing a bit of focus, but it was still very worthwhile. I had read about the salon, and that you could just call her up and try to get invited, so I did. Which, incidentally, is one of the great things about living in NYC; there are accessible heroes here.

Xylor Jane (who I met at Louise B’s salon), because she has channeled her own obsessive/compulsive counting and charting practices into beautiful, intricate illustrations of an interior world. I can relate to her way of being in the world - solitary, not very social, but still desiring a connection with other artists. I am honored to be one of the recipients of her mail art project postcards.

10. If you could no longer weave, what would you do instead?

If I could no longer work on a floor loom, I would hope that I could continue to make weavings by hand, as I have done with money, book pages, etc. Weaving is really just a way of organizing lines and connecting them into a plain; it doesn’t have to be done on a loom, but the loom makes it more efficient. I also enjoy hand-sewing onto/with paper ephemera.

Do you have any upcoming exhibits, talks, or events the community should know about?

I was in a show that just closed at LaiSun Keane Gallery in Boston. I did a talk that is on the gallery’s YouTube channel, with LaiSun and one other artist, in which I talk about how I am connected to the history of weaving, particularly the mythology of textiles, how carrying on the tradition of weaving as an area of knowledge and power for women is important to me. I have a weaving in an upcoming group show at Equity Gallery in New York called Process and Delight; The New P & D, which refers to the Pattern and Decoration movement which started in the 1970s.

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Sep 18 Oriane Stender

Name: Oriane Stender

Studio location: Brooklyn, NY

Website / social links: linktr.ee

Loom type or tool preference: Louet David 2, 8H, because it’s multi-harness, has a sinking shed, and the tie-ups are quick and easy to change.

Years weaving: 10ish this time around (learned about 30 years ago, came back to it about 10 years ago)

Fiber inclination: silk, cotton

Contact information for commissions and collaborations: email address

1. How did you discover weaving and was what your greatest resource as a beginner?

2. How do you define your practice – do you consider yourself an artist / craftsperson / weaver / designer / general creative or a combination of those? Is this definition important to you?

I come from a fine arts background, so I’ve always considered myself an artist rather than a craftsperson, but almost anything that you can learn how to do is a “craft.” Painting is a craft, weaving, cooking … I don’t put “crafts” lower down in the hierarchy of the arts.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

I did my first little weavings in an after-school arts-and-crafts class as a child. I was fascinated by it structurally, only later learning more about the history.

4. What is your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished piece? Are there specific weave structures, looms, or fibers that are important to your process?

I like to work warp-faced, basically making a painting on the warp threads, then the weft just comes along and holds those threads together into a flat plane. I call these woven paintings. I’m now experimenting with incorporating the weft more into the design, like with shadow weaves.

5. Does your work have a conceptual purpose or greater meaning? If so, do you center your making around these concepts?

6. What is your favorite part of the weaving process and why? What’s your least favorite?

Putting the warp on and threading are my least favorite. It would be great to have an assistant to do that. Everything else I love.

7. Do you sell your work or make a living from weaving? If so, what does that look like and how has that affected your studio practice?

I occasionally sell a weaving, but mostly what I have sold are my woven and sewn money works, and drawings on book pages. My work is in several museum and corporate collections, and those pieces are all work made of money, which is the work that I have shown the most.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

9. What other creatives do you admire – weavers, artists, entrepreneurs – and why?

10. If you could no longer weave, what would you do instead?

Do you have any upcoming exhibits, talks, or events the community should know about?

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Sep 18 Oriane Stender

Name: Oriane Stender

Studio location: Brooklyn, NY

Website / social links: linktr.ee

Loom type or tool preference: Louet David 2, 8H, because it’s multi-harness, has a sinking shed, and the tie-ups are quick and easy to change.

Years weaving: 10ish this time around (learned about 30 years ago, came back to it about 10 years ago)

Fiber inclination: silk, cotton

Contact information for commissions and collaborations: email address

1. How did you discover weaving and was what your greatest resource as a beginner?

2. How do you define your practice – do you consider yourself an artist / craftsperson / weaver / designer / general creative or a combination of those? Is this definition important to you?

I come from a fine arts background, so I’ve always considered myself an artist rather than a craftsperson, but almost anything that you can learn how to do is a “craft.” Painting is a craft, weaving, cooking … I don’t put “crafts” lower down in the hierarchy of the arts.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

I did my first little weavings in an after-school arts-and-crafts class as a child. I was fascinated by it structurally, only later learning more about the history.

4. What is your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished piece? Are there specific weave structures, looms, or fibers that are important to your process?

I like to work warp-faced, basically making a painting on the warp threads, then the weft just comes along and holds those threads together into a flat plane. I call these woven paintings. I’m now experimenting with incorporating the weft more into the design, like with shadow weaves.

5. Does your work have a conceptual purpose or greater meaning? If so, do you center your making around these concepts?

6. What is your favorite part of the weaving process and why? What’s your least favorite?

Putting the warp on and threading are my least favorite. It would be great to have an assistant to do that. Everything else I love.

7. Do you sell your work or make a living from weaving? If so, what does that look like and how has that affected your studio practice?

I occasionally sell a weaving, but mostly what I have sold are my woven and sewn money works, and drawings on book pages. My work is in several museum and corporate collections, and those pieces are all work made of money, which is the work that I have shown the most.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

9. What other creatives do you admire – weavers, artists, entrepreneurs – and why?

10. If you could no longer weave, what would you do instead?

Do you have any upcoming exhibits, talks, or events the community should know about?

Oct 23 Maris Van Vlack

Aug 14 Kristen Roos

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