Juliet Martin

Juliet Martin is an interdisciplinary artist working with handmade textile and digital media. Her work incorporates hand-spun and hand-dyed fibres woven together on a Japanese loom with printed digital illustrations. In 2012, Martin discovered weaving on a Japanese loom – designed specifically to be accessible to anyone regardless of age, gender, or disability through encouraging a more free-form process – and its philosophy of “there are no mistakes.” Her process focuses on aesthetics instead of rules. She cuts up and puts back together her weavings, taking something precious, and then recontextualizes it. Juliet says, “I sculpt fibre memoirs, discordant tapestries composed from digital illustrations and hand-woven fabric. I begin each work by weaving a base of machine-made and my hand-spun yarns on a Japanese loom – a process that encourages improvisation and even mistakes. It is hard for me to weave something that isn’t emotional. Weaving becomes my noun and my verb. I make drawings sourced from Google searches based on the day’s thoughts. The drawings– digitally collaged, then printed on fabric and sewn into the weavings – offer a narrative and visual foundation. To underscore the intention of the drawings, I write renditions of how things could feel. I cut up my weavings, risking everything, and sew everything back together with the images and the prose. What is left are compositions that are as much poetry as artwork.”

Juliet has a BA in Visual Arts from Brown University, a MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, and is a member of the Saori Leadership Committee based in Japan.

Find more of Juliet’s work at julietmartin.com