Fairbanks’s will present her work that explores structures and effects embedded in the intersections of cloth that, because of their small scale, often go unseen and unconsidered. By inflating the scale, embedded layers of labor and sophisticated math-based systems are exposed. Her wall weaving installations made out of fluorescent flagging tape display the magnified structures in a radical palette of neon plastic material that feels electric and loud. Through drawings and jacquard weavings, Fairbanks poses questions around value, labor, and time more quietly. Fairbanks’s approach to color, process, and material offers a fresh and witty point of entry into the dialogue and tension that persists between high vs low, and industrial vs handmade.

As well, Fairbanks will present her newest social practice research called Weaving Lab: Plain Cloth Productions. The lab serves as a site of textile production, exploring the creation of simple cloth on domestic floor looms. The public is invited to come learn to weave and contribute their time to experiments around time, rhythm, process, production, meditation, and pattern structures. While there are no hard answers produced in the lab, the woven cloth serves as poetic evidence of communal production.