Textile Artist
Alexandra Lush Benson
Works in progress
2022
I constantly have a project in progress, often times multiple pieces in process. I'll share some pictures of what is yet to come. There may or may not be a description, usually only if I feel it coming together. Check back often for more works!
A quick video showing my process of threading drawing/painting on my Marian Anderson Textile piece.
I am so excited to find new ways to manipulate fabric or create function from waste. These projects I'm exploring the use of fusible powder with gold foil. I've also taken garbage and instead of throwing the plastic bags away, I fused them together to create a singular piece. Looking at the way the heat transformed the bags into an almost reptile skin like texture, I wanted to add paint. I tried copper paint on the discarded garbage and added a patina agent. The results are extraordinary and waiting to be added to my next textile piece.
A piece I’ve been working on. #uvalde has really affected me. The broken hearts of family, students, teachers, a community. One too many shootings. Senseless deaths. America, you want to ban abortion to protect the living but you don’t want to ban guns to protect the living? I implore you, America, to look just in 2022 alone and read about each and every shooting that has happened across our country. Mass shootings in supermarkets, places of worship, schools. Shootings at parties stemming from overheated exchanges. 239 random bullets fired at a school just before children were released for the day. Background checks, mental health assessments are not enough. We take months, in some states over 1 year to be taught, trained and practiced to gain the privilege of driving a car. Licenses can be
revoked for infractions. Guns need the same kind of rigorous training before they should be allowed into the hands of anybody. Assault style weapons have no place in society, in my opinion. They belong only in the hands of expertly trained active duty military. I can’t imagine sending my child off to school to never see them again. I can’t imagine just driving to the store to be shot by a random bullet in my car. I can’t imagine getting into a heated exchange with someone and having their child pull a gun on me. This needs to stop.This textile piece was created serendipitously, though this word seems more uplifting than what the subject matter is.
I was experimenting with turning waste (a coffee bag) into function, i was going to make coins to use in my textile art, but as i cut out the circles i thought of all the families grieving for the loss of loved ones. The rectangles represented the families, the cutout represented the whole left behind from unimaginable loss. Those “coins” turned into the crazy amounts of bullets flying across our country on any given day. The rectangles entwined with each other represent the mass shootings, the communities coming together trying to make sense of the senseless. The background has the names of all the schools that have been targets of gun violence in just 2022. The background also has the hundreds of communities written that experienced gun violence, loss by death and injury. This is an evolving piece and my hope is that by the time it feels complete, there will be some sort of resolution, some way forward so that we as Americans can go to schools, stores, events, birthday parties and not wonder if today is the day we or our loved ones make the news of another shooting, of more thoughts and prayers but no action.