Noel guetti

34” x 239”. georgia-grown single ply cotton, powdered indigo.

25” x 30”. Single-ply English wool. self-drafted pattern.

30” x 25”. Unbleached hemp and qiviut.

Private commission.

25” x 25”. Vreseis color-grown American cotton, vintage single-ply silk noil.

The second piece in a larger project, “Field Clothes”, an ongoing series of handwoven, plant dyed, hand sewn garments designed in collaboration with land-based artists who work outdoors, to be viewed alongside the work created while wearing them, a supporting echo of movements and place.

Made in collaboration with Heidi Gustafson in conjunction with the release of her book, Book of Earth.

25” x 34”. Vreseis color-grown American cotton, single-ply cashmere mill ends, oak galls, iron, antique Norwegian button.

The second piece in a larger project, “Field Clothes”, an ongoing series of handwoven, plant dyed, hand sewn garments designed in collaboration with land-based artists who work outdoors, to be viewed alongside the work created while wearing them, a supporting echo of movements and place.

Made in collaboration with Heidi Gustafson in conjunction with the release of her book, Book of Earth.

30” x 25”. bleached and unbleached hemp, contrast thread dyed with cutch.

Woven and sewn in August 2022 at the Marshfield School of Weaving in Marshfield, VT with instructors Marina Contro and Evan Kinori.

48” x 96”. reclaimed cotton.

The pigment-reclamation cloth was woven as part of a collaboration with artist Tilke Elkins’ series of paintings, Records of Being Held.

It is comprised of six pieces stitched together to form a single canvas that must be cut each time a painting in the Records of Being Held series is rented. The cloths reflect patterns used by early weavers of sail and artist’s canvas, and are designed to show places where the pattern is dissolving or being worn away. Canvas, integral to the infrastructure of the colonization of the so-called “New World” and the subsequent visual records of “exotic” landscapes, is, through this process, inverted from a surface which holds the landscape captive to a vehicle of return which carries the pigment back to its land of origin. The cutting of the canvas/sail represents a ritual dismantling of colonizing structures.

60” x 25”. handwoven hemp, organic cotton, dyed with nettles, onion skins, and iron.

The first piece in a larger project, “Field Clothes”, an ongoing series of handwoven, plant dyed, hand sewn garments designed in collaboration with land-based artists who work outdoors, to be viewed alongside the work created while wearing them, a supporting echo of movements and place.

Each set of garments is designed to support the individual artist in their kinesthetic needs—will they be working in the sun? in the shade? will they be kneeling on rough surfaces, or wet ones? what will they carry in their pockets?—as well as invoking the subtler guardianship offered by the visual and tactile language of clothing—is strength or softness needed to communicate with the landscape in which they’re working? brightness, or blending in?

When a garment is born, it holds both a material and a human story- the twist of an individual cotton plant’s fiber, the shade of a specific patch of marigolds, the idiosyncrasies of a particular tailor’s hand, the repetition of a long lineaged motif. Storied, yet also blank, a scaffolding for associations and meaning. Through wear, clothing gains an imprint of the body within it, as well as the weather and terrain through which that body travels. It holds a record of movements, decisions, accidents, as much a capturing of gesture as the painting made while wearing it. When viewed side by side with that painting, subtle parallels emerge.

Part of a collaboration with artist Tilke Elkins as part of her ongoing project, “After Shadows”. Learn more at her website, www.tilkeelkins.com

18” x 18”, set of six. wool. synthetic dyes.

2020. 25” x 151”. u.s. grown low pesticide and colorgrown cottons. madder, indigo, marigold, sumach, and synthetic dyes.

how do we relate to materials without commodification?

by the time i spend with my hands on the material, by the thought hours, the spirit hours i pour into the making of the thing, i imbue it with life. it becomes holy-furniture, holy-vehicle, alive enough to bear one on big journeys, journeys between planes, journeys between life-selves. when the thing has a rich web of relationships, it’s no longer a thing, no longer belonging to the ‘it.’ the more we are surrounded by beings infused with spirit, the more we envision/place/orient ourselves around beings infused with spirit, and see those around us as such. if consumer mentality is to see ones surroundings as devoid of self-ness, inhabitor mentality is to charge us, to stir up, to draw out as much of the surrounding aliveness one can, to surround oneself in as many threads of relationship as can be found. not clothing, not furniture — story-boats, lineage-holders, long ladders of hands touched. no things, just people.

50” x 80”. u.s. grown low pesticide and color-grown cottons, salvaged acrylic, wool batting, linen fabric. black walnut and synthetic dyes.

2020. 21” x 65” (x 4). low-pesticide cotton. indigo.

repetition is not about the thing you make — it’s a process you hold yourself up against. if you point a camera at a blade of grass and leave it to film over many days, you have not created what you create when you yourself go out and and film that blade of grass every day at dawn.

craft is how we are shaped in the process - by the process - of making.

2020. low-pesticide cotton. sumach, iron, logwood, indigo, madder, synthetic dyes.

there’s always a seam - whatever we do, there’s always a crack where the trickster, the clown, the trip-up, laugh-at-your-predicament, don’t-fool-the-gods, CAN’T-fool-the-gods, self-deprecating shoulder-shrugging world-accepting prayer-for-what-is throw-up-your-hands-and-get-on-with-it-because-the-world-can’t-be-taken-too-seriously laughter slips in. one foot will always be on a crack - you must stay. on. the crack. how else do you fall through onto the other side, or does the other side fall through onto you? where do we want to be, after all? decorate the seams to trick the spirits, decorate the seam to point the spirits a big ol’ road sign, “enter here, I’m coming through, make sure to brush me with your fingers as I pass.”

this is deadly serious.

2020. 131” x 24”. cotton, wool. indigo, Lobaria pulmonaria, synthetic dyes.

2020. 40” x 76”. organic and non-organic cotton. synthetic dyes.

cloth is our smallest architecture - our fist layer of protection and refuge. a consistent/constant through small griefs, little deaths, small joys. and a marker of transition into big joys and big griefs, in mourning and celebrating change, in ushering us through all of the stages of our long/short lives. it wraps us upon birth and death. it can come with us, it is a physical love, accompanying our physical body, the anchor-point for our spirit, the cloth a physical embodiment for the love we are subject to. to wraps one’s body in cloth is to wrap one’s spirit in love.

2020. 7” x 8”. cotton. madder and iron.

2020. 50” x 62”. cotton. indigo.

the many thresholds we occupy —

sleep is a threshold space. rest is a threshold space, where our minds are allowed to go out of conscious focus and into a dream state, wavering between self- and outer-connection. weaving is, itself, a threshold state.

and cloth marks a threshold — between body and world, inner and outer, self and other, one time and another. parts of yourself, your personality. sleep-space and waking. times in your life — the distinct emotions of old clothing. if cloth is an heirloom, what is the memory being held?

2020. 25” x 108”. linen, cotton, wool, silk. indigo and synthetic dyes.

what does it mean for work to be “emergent”? what does emergence entail? listening to the poetry of the materials as they come together and alchemize. I don’t have a pre-settled idea of what they’re going to say. I don’t know, when I begin, that the blush pink satin will sing so sweetly to the rough woven wool lining, that the pocket will want to come to a rounded point just-so. It’s also the presence/inclusion of the record of (the development of) thoughts/ideas.

In weaving, especially, where undoing is slower than doing, when the design is emerging, things that are NOT the design, moments that are out-of-poetry, arise along with the rest. they happen, I’ve followed those threads of the song, they’re discordant, but unlike song they linger, they’re solid an present and inextricable from the continuation of the work, and why shouldn’t they be? my body is inseparable from my dead-end trains of thought, my tangents, my diversions, the dramatic oxbows in my streamed. I contain those moments, they are essential to my present. the blanket contains the mis-placed stripe, we go on.

2020. 36” x 44”. cotton, wool. sheep, synthetic dyes.

2020. 12” x 98”. cotton. indigo and fustic.

2020. 12” x 12”. cotton. black walnut, madder, indigo, apple leaves.

2019. 12” x 12”. Cotton/hemp. Indigo, synthetic dyes.

2019. 28” x 80”. wool. synthetic dyes.