Old Tights into a Sculpture

By the end of winter this year I had a lot of well worn, ratty looking tights. My desire to recycle these well loved clothing items into an art project yielded the above sculpture. I would love to do this on a really large scale- cover the walls and ceiling of a room, for example.

Sculpture: Fabric and Light

This piece, titled Weave, is about 4' wide by 5'. It is a simple weave of strips of fabric of varying textures and patterns such as black lace, yellow block printed cotton, floral upholstery fabric, and magenta netting. All fabric is from a box of scraps and left overs I have accumulated over a semester of sewing projects. I am particularly fond of the tension created by the sterile blue of the LED lights and the warm domesticity of the fabrics I chose.


Nan is meant to hang from the ceiling so that the bottom of the piece hangs at about knee height. When installed properly (and not the hallway of my house in Providence) is becomes figurative- it is about the size of a large person and feels almost like a ghost floating in the room. I have incorporated cut out appliques, spray paint stencils, acrylic painting, and various sewing techniques to achieve a highly decorative effect. I was particularly careful to think about how light from within the sculpture affects the installation space. Both the amoeba-shaped light pattern on the floor and the leaf-shaped light patches shining through the black lace cut outs are essential elements of the sculpture. The slight draft created by a person walking past the sculpture is also an important element in that it changes the form of the light reflections on the floor and the walls.