For this week on Sunday Visit, we spend some time with Vermont-based fiber artist/land conservationist Hannah Regier. Hannah is a second generation professional craftsperson, a small scale homesteader, and “a third or more generation fiber worker.” She says her work is not about any “virtuosity of technique or adherence to current fashions” but more towards exploring how she can be of service to the natural materials she works with and the environment.
Hannah will be sharing her practice and the evolution of her work this week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY focusing on her latest project, Landcestors which was supported by a creation grant from the Vermont Arts Council.
You can RSVP for that here.
Let’s get to know Hannah…
How have you built your own fiber and dye ecosystem in Vermont?
It’s very important to me to be exploring natural fibers and dyes in relationship with the land that the materials come from, the seasons of different activities, and the people in my fibershed. I have tapped into existing natural ecosystems by exploring the land around me in depth to figure out which of my plant, fungi and lichen neighbors provide color and fiber. And then I do lots of experimenting to learn how to best work with the materials. I have grown small crops of Japanese indigo and flax to use in my work. I have met a few local sheep and alpaca shepherds who produce beautiful quality animal fiber, which I get processed at Sallie’s Fen Fiber Mill in Barrington, NH.
Talk about how land conservation has become part of your practice.
I have grown my practice of ethical foraging to include acts of reciprocity like spreading spores and seeds, cultivating gratitude, and sharing my appreciation for these gifts of the land with others. Those small acts do nothing to counter the realities of unscrupulous logging operations and the development of unsustainable house lots. Seeing both of these forces directly impacting land that I love has compelled me to take more action to protect the land. During the pandemic I founded a nonprofit land conservation organization with a small group of friends and neighbors so that we could purchase and conserve some of the special places in our watershed area. You can learn more about Bull Creek Common Lands on our website.
Tell me about your project Landcestors and how it has helped you with storytelling.
Landcestors is a project that intermingles human, land and material stories. The main premise is that our bodies and the land are made of the same elements, experience change and trauma and have innate resilience. Each of the four torso-shaped tapestries explores a different facet of this idea. They have helped me to hold ancestral stories a bit softer, and to align myself with the flow of nature. I’m very curious to see how they are received by others!
Do you think color can be a significant way of getting people to come closer to a story? How have you used it to do just that?
Natural dyes have their own stories that I think are compelling and important for fiber artists and audiences to contemplate. Way beyond being simply a manufactured color in a painting, they have cultural, natural and geographic histories that can teach us so much. And they have distinctive color voices that are unique to each individual organism’s growing circumstances — a color terroir. When I de-center my stories and my desire for control and allow the colors that are offered by the plants, mushrooms and lichens to do their thing, the practice creates its own story of collaboration and connection to the natural world.
Again, Hannah will be sharing her practice and the evolution of her work this week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY focusing on Landcestors which was supported by a creation grant from the Vermont Arts Council. RSVP here.
Interested in exploring regional color from the U.S.? We work with farmers from all over and have lots of their dried flowers!
Try out these regional dyes: