Amy Putansu

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AmyPutansu
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FiberPutansu Textiles
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Amy grew up on the rocky shoreline of coastal Maine, her family is deeply rooted there for generations. The stark and raw nature of the coastal environment has influenced both her aesthetic sensibility and her approach to materials.

Waynesville
NC

I grew up in a fishing village in Maine, along a narrow road that lead to a granite causeway stretching into the ocean. At the end of this causeway, Clark Island awaited. I spent hours of my solitary childhood roaming the shores on either side of this island and the mainland, amassing a visual vocabulary of images that informs my work today: the undulating waves of the ocean, seafoam washed against rocky outcroppings, tidal patterns across the sand, and especially the distant horizon.

The spark for almost every textile I create stems from questions pertinent to my connection with the flux between land and sea. How do we discover direction in life amidst an environment subject to constant change? If I navigate using a shifting internal compass, where does a sense of purpose originate? If “home” is both a feeling and a place, dominated by ever-shifting tides, how do I position myself in the world: as an onlooker perched safely ashore, or as an agent of change that moves fluidly? Questions of impermanence and purpose are part of the human predicament, and I balance this uncertainty by beginning each weaving project from a place of experiential understanding. Like sailing for the distant horizon, it’s never possible to actually arrive.

Using a rare hand weaving technique called ondulé, I maneuver threads out of the strict grid and into wave-like patterns and lines. The resulting contemplative fields of woven work uphold a minimalist aesthetic, with high regard for restraint. Physically, the process of moving with the loom and positioning the reed at varying intervals in ondulé weaving mimics the movement of the tides. Aesthetically, ondulé enables me to capture the fluidity and textures in my visual vocabulary so that, in the end, each piece feels like home.

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