Travis Meinolf
As a weaver my primary methodology is to make connections, to manipulate elements and produce structure and pattern, which embody meaning. In my studio practice this entails gathering yarns and using the loom to organize them into cloth. My social practice involves engaging with groups and individuals and encouraging them to tap into their own productive capacities, to realize the potential that lies within everyone to create objects which function in a real, physical sense. I also teach how handicraft functions semiotically: how things and the processes used to produce them can operate as political and aesthetic statements. Though this potential is not relegated to the textile field alone, I use cloth and cloth production as a point of entry for this dialog because no other human artifact has its quotidian ubiquity and no other technique has its sensuous appeal.