The Collaborative Cosmos of White Dwarf

by Zoya Brumberg (MA 2015)

An unlikely fusion of silk, palm fibers, metallic thread, and alpaca wool unify in a single textile, a tapestry of a multitude of textures.

A grid of blue, gray, and white projects variations in density and weight; indigo squares of fabric dominate the center, while ecru and ash gray bring lightness to the edges. The intermixing of materials reflects the collaboration behind the textile’s creation, a joint project between Venezuelan artists María Eugenia Dávila and Eduardo Portillo. It is named White Dwarf, after a star at the end of its life, light traveling from so far away that the star we see may very well not exist anymore. We can see what was but is no longer there, a fitting inspiration for Dávila and Portillo’s series The Imagined Cosmos.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) faculty members Emily Winter and Danielle Andress co-teach the Fiber and Material Studies course Cloth at Scale, a hybrid weaving course in which students work between studios at SAIC and the industrial weaving space, the Weaving Mill. Associate Professor Andress teaches across the weaving curriculum, and Lecturer Winter is also the cofounder and director of the Weaving Mill. At the artist-run Weaving Mill on Chicago’s West Side, artists design and create fabric and work with local textile artists to execute their designs. 

Cloth at Scale is one of a handful of classes in the US that focus on dobby weaving, which Andress explains is created on complex looms, designed and programmed on computers. Both Andress and Winter teach the computer programming aspect of dobby weaving on campus, and then Winter works with students at the Weaving Mill, where they prepare materials and program their designs into the mechanized dobby looms.

Cloth at Scale introduces students to the world of post-college artmaking, giving them the opportunity to directly engage with the broader Chicago art scene and learn about the ecosystem of the Weaving Mill as an artist-led studio space.

Even when they are executing their own individual designs, students in Cloth at Scale work at multiple stages of the weaving process to appreciate textile-making as a group practice. “Making of textiles is so often a collaborative process, even when one is working on their own work,” said Winter. 

Andress and Winter chose to focus on White Dwarf because collaboration is central to its medium and meaning. Dávila and Portillo’s work represents a strong material consciousness—from raising and harvesting their own silkworms to incorporating traditional Venezuelan alpaca and palm fibers—that embodies a “continued curiosity about the potential of weaving” that Andress and Winter encourage their students to explore.  

In highlighting White Dwarf, Andress said that weaving is “an ancient, global craft,” and it is important to include artists and makers “from around the world and across time to try and contextualize the vastness of the form.” She described White Dwarf as the perfect example of textile art to teach: “It’s an exceptional weaving and a masterful example that encompasses all of the formal considerations that go into making a woven cloth.” ■