Whitlynn Battle

Name: Whitlynn Battle (Lynn)

Studio location: my kitchen / dining room in the Ensley community of Birmingham, Alabama

Website / social links: @nappyweaver, @hood_weaver

Loom type or tool preference: I weave mostly on a 4 shaft floor loom, but my loom preference would be an 8 shaft floor loom. I don’t currently own one.

Years weaving: 3

Fiber inclination: Whatever I can afford, which is usually cotton or tencel.

Current favorite weaving book: Plantation Slave Weavers Remember by Mary Madison

 

 

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

During a tour of Berea College in Kentucky, I entered their weaving cabin during the Fall of 2013. It was the first time I’d ever seen weaving other than the little potholder loom I had as a kid. I was drawn back there over and over again, and also to a (now closed) shop in the town of Berea called Weaver’s Bottom. I visited whenever I saw my daughter on campus over the next five years. My daughter’s last year there, I was given a small rigid heddle loom by a friend and six months later I received a floor loom. The internet then became my teacher and best friend.

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 of myself as a weaver, but hardly ever describe myself as such because being a Black woman living in the inner city most people then assume I do hair. So the weaver title isn’t so important to me, but the title Craftsperson as opposed to Artist is. I try to create things of beauty but more importantly I create things that are to be used. I would much rather create a baby blanket that gets passed down through generations, than an award winning wall hanging.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

I watched a video and read a book and then I did it, it was as if my hands already knew how. I don’t remember very much from the beginning, a couple of months in I got a one hour lesson from a local weaver on the rigid heddle loom. I asked lots of questions in Facebook weaving groups and made dear but virtual friends. Mostly I played around with my loom.

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 varies, usually I get a color scheme in my head which leads me to a fiber and then a structure, and lastly ends up in a type of piece (baby blanket, shawl, towel…).

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

I’m not sure if this is what you mean by this question, but every time I weave I’m celebrating the freedom to be able to weave. I am the descendant of people whose bodies, minds and talents were enslaved, they were denied the ability to flourish and grow. I can’t give what was stolen from them back but I can and do celebrate their “what could have been” every time I sit at my loom.

 

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

I love every step of weaving, even the parts that are hard on my body or seem tedious to my mind. I don’t think I could come up with favorite part. My least favorite part is the sewing of the finished piece, only because is is the part that feels unnatural to me.

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 definitely don’t make a living from my weaving. I do a few commission pieces a year, usually baby blankets or shawls. The orders have to be flexible enough to fit within my creative process or I don’t do them. 

8. Where do you find inspiration?

History, art, nature, my emotions and surroundings.

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

The quilters of Gees Bend. They are artists and craftspeople that create useful beauty out of the wealth of their history and the scraps of their present.

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

Nope, I will spend whatever time I have left in this world quietly creating use-filled orders here in my corner of the hood, from the chaos of pieces of string.