Toolshedding Installation | Weaving Hand Gallery

detail of a micro-weaving for Toolshedding | Abigail Doan (September 2015)

Please join me for Toolshedding at Weaving Hand gallery in Brooklyn on October 1 from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. The event will include an artist discussion and installation featuring a selection of handmade artifacts and textile tools from my studio library.

Toolshedding is an ongoing project exploring the visual archiving and preservation of culturally endangered agricultural and textile objects. As an artist who has lived between the U.S. and Eastern Europe for the past several years, I have been been collecting and working with fiber artifacts, regional textiles, and rural tools in order to explore border-defying design and fashion ideas. 

Collected artifacts include shepherd bells from Bulgaria, braided tent rope from Turkey, hand-spun wool from the Hudson Valley, woven banners from Bohemia, folkloric costume elements, vintage embroidery diagrams, and recycled fibers from the studios of artist and designer friends.

Toolshedding will remain on view through October 24, 2015

Weaving Hand gallery is located at

47 Hall Street, Section E#1, 2nd floor | entrance is on 43 Hall Street

Tumbleweed Colony | Drifts into Brooklyn

The genesis of a flotsam orb | plaited native grass from New Mexico | Abigail Doan (2006)

Tumbleweed Colony, in support of the Textile Arts Center's Sewing Seeds natural dye outreach program, is almost here. Our team of creative contributors and fabricators has been working very hard to explore materials and themes related to bioremediative dye solutions, local color stories, tactile threads, urban air filtering, and wild plant foraging.

Flotsam orb materials collaboration between Abigail Doan + Annelie Berner

Tumbleweed Colony | Distillation Process

'Flotsam Orbs' in progress at the Textile Arts Center | Manhattan

(under the direction of Abigail Doan with kind friends and TAC's textile volunteers)

Interconnected flotsam orbs with laser cut forms from Annelie Berner, data artist at New Inc.

Handmade soap prototypes + foraged terrain finds from The Greater Goods

Multi-hued distillation process at Industry City Distillery in Brooklyn | photo by Abigail Doan

Special edition necklace by Gamma Folk incorporating recycled, naturally dyed fiber scraps

Micro-flotsam orbs in progress at the Textile Arts Center with Ernst Haeckel as inspiration

Collaborative elements for an interactive project with Annelie Berner and Abigail Doan

All of the various components, textures, and tinctures are organically coming together for Tumbleweed Colony, a Sewing Seeds fundraiser at the Wythe Hotel on Thursday, May 7.

Please enjoy some of our process images as well as the distillation of materials we are tinting and tumbling for this unique gathering. Tickets are still available here.

We also thrilled to officially be listed as an event for NYC x Design 2015.