Susan James

I am a fiber artist working at the intersection of paper and cloth.

My hands first found their language in cloth: appliqué, patchwork, quilting and embroidery. Curiosity about my materials pulled me back through the cloth, the thread and the fibre to the seed. Now I grow, harvest and process flax by hand, and spin it into linen thread. The tow left over, which is usually discarded, becomes the starting point for handmade paper. Guided by my mentors Susan Byrd and Hiroko Karuno, I spin paper into thread (kami-ito), weave it into cloth (shifu), and crumple and knead it into a material that can be sewn.

I am a process-based artist. I let the material lead the inquiry, borrowing from weaving, patchwork, Korean joomchi and Japanese momigami to find out what paper and cloth can do. Chance and improvisation are welcome collaborators.

The resulting works hover in a liminal state, familiar and novel at once, and meant to be felt as much as seen. In an increasingly digital world, I am drawn to the handmade, the slow, and the tactile. The finished work is evidence of that making.