nebraska warp/weft: A Senior Thesis Exhibition by Abby Hack

This work is about labor and love. Labor in the 10,000 notches and countless hours experimenting with the looms and the yarn. Labor in learning how to weave without taking a course or reading a book. And love, well love because the yarn came to me from my family members, remnants from projects long done and yarn that wasn’t enough for another sock or sweater but was too precious to be sent to the trash. The work was also born out of a desire I had to immortalize the words from my mother’s voicemails to me; the voicemails add yet another layer of love. The imagery in the looms was loosely based on spectrograms of my mom’s voicemails and it was important for me to take her nurturing and caring nature and translate that into weavings.

Most of the looms are connected to one another and no yarn was cut in the process. The “leftovers,” the unwoven yarn, remains connected to the loom with the thought that maybe someday the works will be woven on again. Or maybe they’ll be unwoven and rolled back up into skeins for someone else to use.

This work is optimistic.

And I really do love these looms. And I miss the way their labor filled my days.

nebraska warp/weft walkthrough from Abigail Hack on Vimeo.