Beneath the Wave, 2025

Beneath the Wave, 2025

Linen and wool yarn, silk, naturally dyed with dock root, seashells

Beneath the Wave is the visual representation of the emotions I experienced while swimming in a lake and being filled with anxiety, panic, and dread. It was the night before I was to fly to another country for a two-month backpacking trip, and I couldn’t figure out if the emotions I was experiencing were my intuition telling me to stay home or if it was simply my anxiety. I floated on my back to try to calm myself, listening to the muffled waves, trying to make up my mind. In the end, I didn’t listen to my gut, and I regretted it. For this piece, I used knitting, sewing, and natural dyeing. Knitting was used to represent water, with techniques such as tuck up and short rows used to show the energy of the waves. For the lake floor, I dyed a sheet of silk in a bath of dock root using shibori as a dye resist method. I then mordanted the silk with iron, creating a dark, grey color that looks like the zebra mussels that populate my lake. Blue thread was pulled through both panels and strung with beads I made from seashells found at a local beach. During the presentation of the piece, I used lamps to illuminate it in a dark room to create shadows from the knit, and positioned a fan towards it to create wind and movement.