Sam Dienst

Name: Sam Dienst

Pronouns: she/her

Studio location: Detroit, Michigan

Website / social links: samdienst.com, @sam.dienst

Loom type or tool preference: Leclerc Tissart Tapestry Loom

Years weaving: 7

Fiber inclination: Anything and everything, as long as its colorful

Current favorite weaving book: My favorite book at the moment isn’t so much a weaving book as I look at painting and drawing just as much as textile inspiration. The book is titled “Lee Lozano Drawings 1958-64“ and is a collection of many of her drawings.

Contact information for commissions and collaborations: For interest in commissions, purchases, or collaboration please use my contact page on my website.

 

 

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

I discovered weaving in my undergraduate Fiber program at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. I think my greatest resource was having a very knowledgeable teacher, Ann Wessmann, who covered a broad scope of what was possible in weaving. Not all intro weaving classes explore tapestry but mine did, and I fell in love with the possibility of making pictures out of cloth.

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 think that for a long time I was opposed to being pigeon-holed as a craft person or just a weaver but now the titles do not carry a huge amount of weight. I know that I am an artist first and foremost, and I will always love to sculpt and draw in addition to weaving tapestry. But I now see craft and technique as a positive aspect of my particular form of art. I think that having such a niche skill-set makes me stand out as distinguished amongst the vast world of contemporary fine art.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

I took an intro to weaving not thinking much about it beyond fulfilling a fiber elective slot. I think that I feared it would be too much technical and repetitive labor and that I might get bored. I hadn’t considered the amount of spontaneity that was available within warp colors and non-continuous wefts. I just started building shapes and lines and forms via tapestry techniques without a beginning plan or cartoon. I have been in love with it ever since.

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?

My process involves a lot of translation and layers from beginning to end. Lately much of my work starts with soft sculptures primarily made out of sewn and painted craft felt. I love to capture my everyday life in the objects I sculpt and making them out of felt makes them malleable and gives them an anthropomorphic feeling. I want inanimate objects to become little entities and have a life of their own.

I then spend time photographing or drawing these sculptures and collaging those photos into digital compositions for my cartoons. I project my digital assemblages onto cartoon papers that float behind my warp and guide the composition. My cartoons are always simple black and white line drawings, and the specific colors and fibers I choose happen in the moment as I weave, so that even I do not know exactly what the work will look like palette-wise until it is complete. Having a spontaneous relationship to my color choices keeps me present and excited about the work.

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

I think that via my sculptures that become the subject matter for tapestries the concept for the work is both translation, self-reflection, and the concept of subjectivity. It is hard to put in words the total meaning of my work, and I believe that viewers bring so much to the work that I can’t control or anticipate. The sometimes highly ambiguous forms in my work allow viewers to find shapes and sometimes stories within my imagery. I am open to letting that subjective journey be different for everyone who looks at the work. Overall, I make work that is strange, bold, alive, and slightly surreal. The compositions represent a metaphysical plane inhabited by fragments from my personal environments.

 

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

My favorite part is probably cutting off the work at the end, both because the scissors are physically satisfying and because I can finally see the work in its entirety. I always have a good idea of what the work will look like completed, but the final reveal always has small surprises that I love. My least favorite part is probably winding on a new warp, but luckily, I make very long warps and only have to do this step every few months.

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 do sell my work and it does contribute to part of my income. In addition to exhibiting and selling work I also teach a weaving class at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit which helps me to make just enough supplemental income to get by. I am very fortunate to have a relatively low-cost studio and living space that is allowing me to continue pursuing my art full-time. I think that as a contemporary artist living in a tumultuous and ever more expensive world, it can add a lot of pressure to my studio practice. I think this pressure is both a motivation to push myself to make my best work but can also be stressful as I often think about whether a work is sellable or will be well received by others. Overall, I feel like I have plenty of freedom to explore and create the work that I really want to be making.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration all around me. I am especially drawn to objects that are part of daily routines and rituals. My coffee cup, food packaging, cell phone, and TV remote are all things that I interact with on a regular basis and thus I have a relationship with them. By recreating them in felt and tapestries I feel that I give them an energy beyond that of inanimate objects and celebrate and question my dependence and fondness for them. Our environments, food, and possessions are extensions of self-expression and I always circle back to pondering how far my identity is entangled in those objects.

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

I have a few favorite contemporary tapestry artists that I love to follow, including Christina Forrer, Kayla Mattes, and Dance Doyle. Additionally, I love to look back at the generations before us who set textiles into a fine art context such as Anni Albers, Olga de Amaral, and Magdelana Abakanowitz, particularly her abakan series. Beyond textiles I look at a great deal of painting as I see tapestry as a sister to the conventional stretched canvas compositions. I look to the weavers for technique, concept, and material inspiration, and I look to painters for compositions and color inspiration.

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

First, I would cry for a long time, and then I would probably start painting. I would still make my soft sculptures and likely begin to translate them into paintings and drawings similar to my current tapestries. Even as I continue to weave, I do foresee expanding my practice into multiple avenues of making. I think each new mode of making enriches and informs the others.

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

I currently have work up at Praxis Fiber Workshop in Cleveland Ohio now through June 15th 2022. There may be an artist talk as part of that exhibition later in the spring. I recommend following me on Instagram to keep up with all the latest news and events I am involved with.