ARTIST: Mariah Smith

SKIRT NO: 10.121, 27.350, 31.380, 31.386 

MATERIALS: Deconstructed wool skirts, fabric stiffener, poly-urethane

METHOD: Cutting, fraying, stiffening, braiding, sealing

ARTIST STATEMENT

“This is an eight-strand braid made from four different plaid wool skirts. The skirts were already deconstructed when I received them, and I cut the various pieces into strips with scissors. I pulled out individual strands of yarn from the long sides of each strip until those edges had a long fringe. The fringe helps us understand the structure of the plaid. I connected the strips of each skirt to make four long strips, then I used a paintbrush to apply Aleene’s Fabric Stiffener & Draping Liquid to each of them. The stiffened wool resists compression and creates loops and gaps that help us understand the structure of the braid. After I finished braiding, I slathered the whole thing in poly-urethane. 

I wanted to braid these plaids because I’ve been thinking a lot about the overlaps between braiding and weaving. In Braid, the structural grids of the plaid and the braid are literally crashing into each other. Plaid exemplifies an important difference between braiding and weaving because it is dependent on the relationship between warp and weft. Braiding and weaving follow the same basic pattern—over, under, over, etc.—but they’re different: structurally, because the braid has no substructure (no warp), and conceptually because they each make us think and feel different things."

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mariah Smith is an artist, designer, and educator. Her practice explores the role of visual representation in the production and contemplation of tactile, domestically coded environments.