Unusual Care: Leslie Smith & Katie Wigglesworth

September 5  – November 10, 2023 | Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery

 

January 18, 1934

You all know, if you have observed, that twice during the life of the weaving, I have risked all I possessed, and all the strength of my body and soul, to make this work go. . . I have proven to you that my life and my joy and my work are one and the same thing.

-Lucy Morgan

 

 

Katie Wigglesworth, a textile artist from California, and Leslie Smith, a book artist from North Carolina, met during a winter residency at Penland School of Crafts. Their two practices, though inherently different, have parallels and similarities and, during their time at the winter residency, they began to notice these linkages. It was clear that their disciplines were exploring in the same vein and, during a subsequent winter residency at Penland, the two began research in the Penland archive with the idea of composing a collaborative body of work that would be intertwined with the history of the craft school. The archive was packed with yellowed correspondence on onion skin, notebooks of weaving notation, and weaving samples. This was the perfect nourishment for a printer and a weaver. 

The founder of Penland, Lucy Morgan, began the school to teach Appalachian women to weave at a time when the craft had almost died out. The goal was for women to learn to weave, make home goods, and sell them; it was a way for them to earn a supplemental income. Once the plan was in motion, Morgan often bought the woven pieces from the women before she knew how or where she would sell them. She was so sure of the importance and value of the work at Penland that she often leapt before she looked. Smith and Wigglesworth were very moved and inspired by Morgan’s faith in the idea of Penland and the way she plunged headlong into the work, again and again, without the luxury of certainty. This is the leap all artists have to make. 

 

 

The collaboration that has sprung from this research and time in the archives is a series of prints and woven panels that hang in conversation with each other and with the rich and beautiful history of sharing knowledge through craft. The prints, each comprised of at least two layers of thin onion skin, contain references to the weaving notations and the letters of correspondencefound in the archives. The layering nature of these prints forms unexpected and poetic compositions and speaks, subtly, to the intertwined and overlapped lines of their woven counterparts. Similarly, the woven panels, though made on a traditional loom, speak to typesetting and letter writing. The patterns in the weaving are wordless text, a correspondence about the energy and calling-out-to-others it takes to begin a large undertaking.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY IN EXHIBITION READING ROOM:

Adrosko, Rita J. Natural Dyes and Home Dyeing: A Practical Guide with Over 150 Recipes. New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971.

Bayles, David and Ted Orland. Art & fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. Santa Cruz, CA & Eugene, OR: The Image Continuum Press, 2004.

Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Dye Plants and Dyeing- a handbook: This Handbook is a Special Printing of Plants & Gardens, vol. 20, no. 3. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, 1964.

Brown, Rachel. The Weaving, Spinning, and Dyeing Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.

Buchanan, Rita. A Weaver’s Garden: Growing Plants for Natural Dyes and Fibers. Garden City, NY: Dover Publications, 2022.

Cotton, Jerry W. Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten. Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Davison, Marguerite P. A Handweaver’s Pattern Book. Churchill & Dunn, Ltd., 1994.

Davison, Mary Frances. The Dye Pot. Third ed. Gatlinburg, TN: Published by author, 1981.

Hasluck, Paul N. All About Traditional Textiles Fabrics for DIY Spinning, Weaving, and Dyeing: Classic Information on Fibers and Cloth Work. Legacy ed. Eugene, OR: Doublebit Press, 2020.

McLaughlin, Chris. A Garden to Dye For: How to Use Plants from the Garden to Create Natural Colors for Fabrics and Fibers. Pittsburg, PA: St. Lynn’s Press, 2014.

Morgan, Lucy and LeGette Blythe. Gift from the Hills: Miss Lucy Morgan’s story of her unique Penland School with LeGette Blythe. Third ed. Penland, NC: Penland School of Crafts, 2005. (Two copies)

Taylor, Lyrica, editor. Warp and Weft, Chain Stitch and Pearl: Textiles in the Ahmanson Collection. Irvine, CA: Pinatubo Press, 2015.

The Rochester Institute of Technology. Handweaver & Craftsman, vol. 23, no. 2, March/April 1972.

Wigginton, Eliot, ed. The Foxfire Book: hog dressing, log cabin building, mountain crafts and foods, planting by the signs, snake lore, hunting tales, faith healing, moonshining, and other affairs of plain living. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press | Doubleday, 1972.

Wigginton, Eliot, ed. Foxfire 2: ghost stories, spring wild plant foods, spinning and weaving, midwifing, burial customs, corn shuckin’s. wagon making and more affairs of plain living. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press | Doubleday, 1973.

Wigginton, Eliot, ed. Foxfire 3: animal care, banjos and dulcimers, hide tanning, summer and fall wild plant foods, butter churns, ginseng and still more affairs of plain living. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press | Doubleday, 1975.

Znamierowski, Nell. Step-by-Step Weaving: A Complete Introduction to the Craft of Weaving. New York: Golden Press, 1967.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS: 

LESLIE SMITH is a printmaker and book artist, who makes research based artwork. Collaboration is an important part of her artist practice. She holds an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book, an MLS in Library Science, and an MA in Spanish and Latin American literature. She is currently the artist-in-residence at Radford University in Radford, Va. 

Website: www.leslie-a-smith.com

KATIE WIGGLESWORTH is a textile/ installation artist living and working in Southern California. She holds a BFA from Biola University where she studied Sculpture and Installation. Her practice, grounded primarily in the medium of weaving, is meticulous and long-form. Beginning with thin threads, she makes woven spans of fabric that are subsequently fashioned into three-dimensional compositions and installations. Ingrained in these works is the artist’s persistent curiosity of the

dimensionality of reality; the simultaneous existence of that which is visible and known, and that which is ineffable. The woven lines of her work, accumulated into layers and labyrinths, give frame to the tension and mystery of this strange, manifold truth.