Art in the Time of COVID

Introduction to Fiber Arts

with Princess VanGulden

Like everything else this semester, the Introduction to Fiber Arts course was thrown into tumult with all the changes necessitated by the pandemic.

Students continued to develop their skills and make beautiful work in their various pockets of the country, adapting to all sorts of issues that came up: from the postal service not delivering materials, to dyeing yarn without a dye studio (check out the food coloring dyed yarn!).

Here, you’ll see a lot of handspun yarn as you scroll through the photos.  While students waited for materials to arrive, they kept those spindles spinning and cranked out hundreds of yards of handspun.  In one case, enough for a handspun, hand knit sweater (made just over the course of this semester, all with wool from the Sterling farm)!

We all look forward to when we can have a Fiber Arts reception again in Dunbar Hall or the Brown Library, and see all that handspun yarn and felted wool in person. In the meantime, we can enjoy a different kind of show, and this one even has a dog, which is a first for the Student Fiber Arts show.

It’s such a joy to have a peek at what students have been able to create through hardships, with determination, continuing to learn and make useful items while juggling all the new spheres we each have had to navigate in this strange time.  This is Sterling resilience at its finest.