"As an artist in residence at AiR Green, I will explore vernacular textile traditions, forage for dye plants and mushrooms, and express a local color palette through natural dyeing. I will dye fabric and yarn and, in continuation of a series titled Essayettes, I will spend my time weaving, sewing, and stitching to create textile works in response to place. I will walk, observe, read, and explore to cultivate a connection to place and translate the experience into my visual language of light, color, texture, and form.."
Artist´s Statement
Observing the possibilities and limitations of a seasonally and geographically specific palette, I create ecologically focused textile art that engages with the living world through traditional practices of foraging, dyeing, weaving, and stitching. I explore the common threads of our shared humanity, aiming to forge connections—to the earth, to ancestral knowledge, and to one another.
Growing and foraging materials, I cultivate a relationship between the body and the land, delving into the tension inherent in the temporality of the living world. I bond the qualitative experiences of light and color to the physical materials of fabric and yarn, creating a place-based palette that is unique to here and now. Color serves as the foundation of my work, which manifests as large, ethereal fabric assemblages, loom-woven pieces, paintings, and sculpture to represent the cycles of life and gesture towards our place in the family of things.
Biography
Kayla Powers is a place-based artist and naturalist who makes ecologically focused textile art with and about the living world. Kayla holds an MFA in Fiber Art from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA in Art History from Western Michigan University. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, Simone DeSousa Gallery in Detroit, Michigan and General Motors Design Center in Warren, Michigan among others. She was the recipient of a Knight Art Grant from the Knight Foundation, the President’s Award for Sustainability from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a Windgate Fellowship from Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and was a nominee for the Outstanding Student Award from Surface Design Association. She has upcoming residencies at AiR Green in Noresund, Norway, Saugatuck Center for the Arts in Saugatuck, Michigan, and the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, Australia where she was awarded the Hancock International Fellowship.
