She explores these ideas by working exclusively with repurposed and secondhand textiles and she hopes to illuminate how the nature of the connection between materials and process has immense power, trying to find mechanisms to communicate visually, verbally, and materially the ways that individual and community wellbeing are affected by our ability to make and our connections to the materials that we make with. She is currently an artist in residence at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
Andrea Arts
A Sock is a Sock is Sock
Hand-knit objects, second-hand yarn
“My work is rooted in an exploration of the handmade, examining how a connection to materials and the processes that transform them ultimately shift our relationships with objects. I am interested in how commodified goods, specifically clothing, can straddle the boundaries between functional object and art object—how this shift in the definition of what something “is” can change with simply an alteration in presentation or context.
By knitting pieces entirely out of handspun and second-hand yarns, I aim to investigate the layers of meaning present in these objects. The resulting pieces are significant not only in what I’ve done with the materials but within the materials themselves—the history and the labor that make up these yarns can be used as a language in their own right.”
— Andrea Arts
About the artist
Andrea Arts
She explores these ideas by working exclusively with repurposed and secondhand textiles and she hopes to illuminate how the nature of the connection between materials and process has immense power, trying to find mechanisms to communicate visually, verbally, and materially the ways that individual and community wellbeing are affected by our ability to make and our connections to the materials that we make with. She is currently an artist in residence at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
