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Studio Notes — ReturningCloth, Community, mountain laurel, and new work forming in Western North Carolina.
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Returning The last newsletter I sent was in March, just before I returned to Minneapolis to pack up my life and studio. Since then everything has been in motion. U-Haul containers, stacks of cloth, boxes of books and wool, long drives between places, and finally arriving back here in Marshall with Pearl and slowly beginning again. What surprised me most was how quickly life rushed back in once I arrived. The mountain laurel bloomed almost the exact week I returned, and suddenly everything felt intensely green and alive again. I set up my old Scandinavian work table beneath the cabin window overlooking the mountains and brought a Wolf Pup loom home so I could work outside on the porch again, almost immediately began making. During the move I carefully flat-packed every weaving fragment, every strange little color study and scrap of cloth I had saved over the years. I didn’t fully understand why it felt so important to bring them all with me until now. They are slowly becoming a new body of work. |
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Mountain Laurel / Making Most mornings here begin quietly. Coffee, drawing, stitching, getting outside to walk down the path with Pearl. Lately I’ve been beginning many pieces by carrying cloth outside and pouring dye directly over it, letting the fabric become completely saturated and heavy with color in the morning light. I’ve been spending time layering handwoven fragments, wool, felt, stitching, and collected pieces of cloth into small textile works that feel somewhere between paintings, repairs, and objects. What’s emerging feels softer and stranger than earlier work somehow. Less about perfect structure and more about atmosphere, memory, color, and accumulation. The light here keeps finding its way into the work too.
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Family Dinner Three days after I arrived, a group of women artists here hosted a birthday dinner for me in the studio. Now we gather weekly for potlucks and our group text is called “family dinner,” which honestly still surprises me a little. After so much solitude, transition, and packing, this immediate sense of community has felt deeply grounding. There is something special happening here in Marshall right now. Conversations around art, handwork, sensitivity, repair, and building meaningful creative lives together. I feel very lucky to have landed inside it. |
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The New Weaving Shortly after arriving back in town, I was asked to curate the first major reopening exhibition for the Madison County Arts Council following the flood and stunning renovation of the building. The exhibition is called The New Weaving: Contemporary Cloth Culture in Appalachia and Beyond and has already stretched and challenged me in exciting ways. I began reaching out to artists whose work I deeply admire and was genuinely surprised and grateful that nearly everyone said yes. The show is becoming a conversation around weaving not simply as a medium, but as a language of structure, labor, tactility, memory, experimentation, and connection across disciplines and generations. More on this soon. |
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Marshall High Back at Marshall High Studios, the spaces are slowly beginning to fill with life again too. Recently we gathered for a group portrait with our dear friend and longtime champion of the arts, Rob Pulleyn, whose health has been declining. The building itself nearly didn’t survive the flood, and seeing artists working here again feels emotional and miraculous in its own way. Thank you to Lauren of Milkhouse Arts for photographing us so beautifully as a kind of time capsule for this moment..
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Pearl Meanwhile Pearl has fully returned to her Appalachian mountain dog roots. I recently learned that her breed originated in these mountains, and honestly it has been special watching her settle so naturally into this landscape. She spends her days prancing through the woods, watching every movement in the trees, splashing through creeks, meeting turtles, and attempting to greet every passing creature as if it might become her close personal friend. There’s something wonderfully independent and curious about these mountain dogs here. They wander, observe, patrol, disappear briefly into the rhododendrons, then return looking extremely pleased with themselves. Watching her move through this place so instinctively has made me feel more at home here too. |
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New Work Release Over the past weeks a small collection of new textile works has quietly emerged from all of this movement and transition. Each piece is built slowly from handwoven fragments, wool, stitching, layered cloth, and accumulated material carried with me through the move back to the mountains. I keep imagining them living quietly in homes over years. Gathered salon-style across walls, beside bookshelves, near morning coffee, collecting meaning over time. They are intentionally unframed. I love the softness and direct physical presence of the cloth itself, though they could also be beautifully housed in shadowbox frames. A small collection of one-of-a-kind works will be released Friday at noon Eastern in my webshop.
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Image: Tangled Garden. wool yarn, wool felt, metallic yarn, acid dye. 2026
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Thank you for being here through all of this movement and beginning again.
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More soon, Amber Marshall, North Carolina Ambermjensen.com / Instagram
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