Evolution, ecology and environmental activism are beautifully conveyed through American artist Gin Stone’s art. Critiquing “humanity’s approach to the degradation and disrespect of the natural world” she employs a range of found materials in her pieces that are rich in colour, texture and meaning. Born in New York in 1971, her home and studio are in coastal Massachusetts, an area she would like to acknowledge is on the stolen ancestral land of the Monomoyick People. She tries to be a good steward of the land, letting nature reclaim the surroundings.

Did you have an artistic childhood?

When I was very young, I was in upstate NY, then later in the tri-state NYC area. No one in my family was an artist, and we didn’t go to museums, but I did begin going to natural history museums on my own, which is what I still love most. That’s where I found my love of the ‘diorama and taxidermy’ format of display in an academic setting. I grew to LOVE rocks and geology, and to this day use their inspiration in my work. No matter where I was living though, I found time to be alone outside and looking at nature up close. I spent a lot of time just looking at things. Man-made ruins, abandoned houses, nature reclaiming us.

What are your first memories of doing textiles?
When I was little my grandmother sewed a bit, she taught me to crochet and macrame. But in my teens, I turned to painting as an artistic outlet because I wasn’t aware there were other approaches to art, as I hadn’t been introduced to modern art museums. I never made the connection. I went to school for painting but was uninspired and still only knew of art as fitting into a few rigid formats, like clay, paint, metal, stone. I even continued to paint well into my late thirties; it wasn’t until I moved to coastal New England and was exposed to fiber/textile refuse in the form of marine debris that it opened a new world to me.

What is your background in textiles? Did you do a degree or are you self-taught?

When I discovered the world of fibers, I went about teaching myself about the limits and possibilities of the material as someone who had never worked with it and wanted to learn all I could about what it could do. I began dying it with fabric dye, then natural dyes and stains such as rust water. I did flat color studies with it until I began working with it three dimensionally. I take fibers apart and put them back together to see what they can mimic. I want the artificial waste fiber to mimic nature, whether it be rocks or lichen or fur. I enjoy restructuring it.

How do you describe your art?

That’s something I struggle with, I mean visual art is inherently visual, or even tactile, but generally not verbal, and my work uses so many techniques and materials. So I start with a goal of addressing my own critical view of man’s hand in the world. Greed, consumption, exploitation, waste. I try to turn the waste into beauty but also comment on the state of why this waste exists. Whether it be a standalone work, a series studying one aspect of it or an installation with a complex narrative, I am always critiquing humanity’s approach to the degradation and disrespect of the natural world. We have as a species decided we are not part of it anymore, and that is just not acceptable. The toned-down elevator pitch is this:
As an interdisciplinary artist, I explore the possibility of a material’s ability to transform. My focus is on fiber and mixed media constructions and installations that convey environmental activism, while incorporating material based sub-text. My materials include commercially fished line, ghost gear, recycled and antique textiles as well as found objects, which come together to create a universe only slightly different from our own.

Your work is vary varied, what textile techniques do you use?

I think I use whatever technique seems to solve the problem of that piece in the space it needs to occupy. Being open to curiosity and figuring out solutions through trial and error is a child-like and creative way to approach anything. So, if I have to hand stitch, use a sewing machine, glue, knot, fold, weave; it’s what the piece needs to get to the end result, I just play with ideas until a solution appears to create the desired effect. For example, with the unnatural decay series, I am taking finely woven fiber that was originally part of fishing nets that were dredged from the ocean floor then dying it, unweaving it, combing it, teasing it, until I can get it to resemble tufts of fluffy lichen or mycelium networks, or cleanly cutting it into geode strata or the patterns of fungal growth. It’s unnatural decay because it’s our plastic/nylon waste, but it looks like an otherworldly natural process.

You said your work is a “cocktail of science, culture, nature, myth, history, and ritual” where do you find your inspiration? Is it through reading, other art etc.

Where don’t I find inspiration? Honestly, I think of all the things I found fascinating in childhood and spent time reading about in the library (I spent a lot of time at the towering card catalog- shout out to all those Dewey Decimal fans). Archaeology, mythology, other cultures, approaches to ritual. Science and biology, those rocks and dioramas I looked at in the museums. Reading Joseph Campbell or Robin Wall Kimmerer and all my art books.

How do you create a piece?

Everything starts with an idea and creating it relies on the materials needed to either push forward the narrative or what can be manipulated to achieve a particular aesthetic. So, its always different. Sometimes I will use taxidermy bases and attach human body forms to the heads (like my chimera creations representing goddesses of antiquity) and use the textiles as surface design to replicate a look, sometimes the material itself is enough to do the job. For instance, the 6,000 feet of recovered lobster line that I coil built into a life-size replica of a North Atlantic Right whale ribcage (the material being the most common cause of fatality for the quickly vanishing creatures).

I have used dyed fibers from recovered ghost gear netting (50-year-old Russian fishing gear accidentally dredged in 600 feet of water in the North Atlantic off Provincetown recovered and documented in collaboration with the Center for Coastal Studies) to pay homage to the brush strokes of painter Joan Mitchell sewn onto scrim, organic cotton and muslin through a sort of deconstructed quilt. Used clothing from my late father in large sewn landscape diptychs. Discarded bits of clothing torn and incorporated into large fungi representative of the rebirth of earth after our extinction. Long tangles of ghost netting connecting like mycelium. For geodes, after cleaning and dying the netting, the knots are cut out as I work the fibers, leaving individual pieces of line no more than an inch and a half long (and under 2mm in diameter).

I think creating a piece is always a learning experience.

What is your proudest moment to date in your art career?

I spent several months working on a planned installation that was only to be given 48 hours to install, photograph, and give a publicly attended talk about, then disassemble and take away. The concept was very meaningful to me (the rise of a commodification society and the concept of eco-feminism to fight against it), and I gave a very impassioned talk with well researched examples and ways people could make a difference in the world today. I received a standing ovation and many emails in the following days from people who attended and were deeply moved. That made me extremely proud.

Do you have any advice for aspiring textile artists?

I think my advice for any artists (or people in general): Don’t follow the rules that someone else put in place, find your own way. Find a way to incorporate the things, ideas and aesthetics that you are drawn to and that give you joy, and it will show in your work. If you aren’t inspired and love what you do, what’s the point?

Gin Stone is currently exhibiting at the Silvermine Arts Centre until October 24th. Visit www.silvermineart.org for more details.

www.ginstoneart.com

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