HOW TO TELL AN HONEST STORY with textile artist Woomin Kim
1h 2m
·
SEAMSIDE: Exploring the Inner Work of Textiles
·
Every time Woomin’s work pops up in my feed it’s a quilty dopamine hit. Her appliqued wall pieces depict scenes from her life in Queens New York and back home in Korea. And you don’t have to see very many of her pieces to realize that her world is abundant in story-telling objects and almost completely devoid of pesky and interfering humans. To hear her talk about how in her previous sculpture practice, she often felt alone, solo on stage, but now having connected with fabric, she never feels alone surrounded by the rich narratives textiles carry.
In this SEAMSIDE conversation, Woomin and I discuss: ① why objects make better story-tellers than humans ② how to capture a sense of home no matter where you may be ③ what our daily spaces reveal about us
WHY LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE?
Woomin Kim shares her journey from sculpture to textile collage, using fabric to narrate personal and communal stories. Central to Woomin’s work are the themes of home, identity, and the unseen labor embedded in everyday objects and environments.
→ Get your free trial to the QUILTY NOOK
→ See images and more at the EPISODE WEBSITE
→ Follow Zak on INSTAGRAM
The episode HOW TO TELL AN HONEST STORY with textile artist Woomin Kim from the podcast SEAMSIDE: Exploring the Inner Work of Textiles has a duration of
1:02:55. It was first published
More episodes from SEAMSIDE: Exploring the Inner Work of Textiles
BACKSTITCH with Coulter Fussell
It’s been a year since Coulter Fussell and I first chatted here on SEAMSIDE. In that conversation, we talked about the South and family history, the role of community in her work, and how she maintains hope in the face of conflict. You can find that first conversation, HOW TO WORK WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT, in your feed below in March 2023.
In this new SEAMSIDE conversation, Coulter and I reconnect and explore:
① why in the world she’s making headboards
② the traditional magic of making dolls
③ why Coulter thinks the world’s first sculpture was made by busy mothers
→ Get your free trial to the QUILTY NOOK
→ Claim your free copy of 10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE I STARTED QUILTING
→ See images and more at the EPISODE WEBSITE
→ Follow Zak on INSTAGRAM
BONUS Convo with Tyrrell Tapaha
In this raw and unedited conversation, we talk about Tyrrell's newest work along with three artists he thinks everyone should follow
→ Get your free trial to the QUILTY NOOK
→ Claim your free copy of 10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE I STARTED QUILTING
→ See images and more at the EPISODE WEBSITE
→ Follow Zak on INSTAGRAM
HOW TO TEND THE FLOCK with weaver and sheepherder Tyrrell Tapaha
Tyrrell Tapaha, a sixth-generation Diné weaver and sheepherder, will tell you there’s nothing in his work that specifically belongs to him. And while it may be true that there’s nothing new under the sun and that all artists draw from deep wells of collective experience, I can’t help but think that there is something special about Tyrrell’s work—the use of text, the collage-like shifts in weaving patterns, the subject matter—that sets his work apart.
In this SEAMSIDE conversation, Tyrrell and I discuss: ① the intrinsic differences between sheep and goats ② how his great-grandmother’s loom fits perfectly on top of his car ③ how to balance preserving tradition and forging new pathways
WHY LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE? In this conversation we explore Tyrrell’s personal and cultural experiences with weaving, with insights into how he combines a practice that’s deeply rooted in tradition while simultaneously creating new and unexpected work
→ Get your free trial to the QUILTY NOOK
→ Claim your free copy of 10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE I STARTED QUILTING
→ See images and more at the EPISODE WEBSITE
→ Follow Zak on INSTAGRAM
GENERATION: Eroding Foundations and Making It Right
Time continually marching forward. Each new day just piles on top of yesterday and gets buried further back in what we have come to call history.
I think there's a problem with thinking about time that way, and that's what we're exploring today on SEAMSIDE. I'm going to share with you a quilt that I made called Generation. It's part of the Southern White Amnesia, a body of work that I've pulled together in the last couple years, exploring the stories that Southern White families tell each other and the ones they don't.
In this SEAMSIDE conversation, we explore:
① what to do with treasured but unusable family quilts
② how every quilt has something to teach us
③ how time plays with quilts
→ See images and more at the EPISODE WEBSITE
FREE ADVICE with Maura Grace Ambrose
My good friend Maura Grace Ambrose joins for me for this SEAMSIDE special episode I’m calling FREE ADVICE where we answer your questions on quilting and the creative life.
In this episode, we share our thoughts on the following questions:
➞ how our quilt aesthetic has changed over time,
➞ how to learn quilting without spending a lot of money or time
➞ what to do with random experimental pieces
➞ how to help objects made from imperfect salvaged materials look their best
➞ Maura offers a fool-proof method for getting started with natural dyes
➞ do you need a quilting hoop to hand quilt?
➞ what’s it like to quilt professionally?
➞ our favorite podcasts
We’re recording this on the one-year anniversary of our first SEAMSIDE chat, HOW TO GIVE AND RECEIVE which you can find here.
→ Claim your free copy of 10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE I STARTED QUILTING
→ Get your free trial to the QUILTY NOOK
→ See images and more at the EPISODE WEBSITE
→ Follow Zak on INSTAGRAM
A special thanks to the folks whose questions made this conversation possible: Marie from Canada, Amy from Pittsburgh, Teresa from Losa Angeles, Sherry from Kentucky, Judy from Florida, Kara from Maine, Adelaide from the Twin Cities, and Polly from North Carolina