Magnus Maxine x Olderbrother
This season’s up-cycle collection, Fermentation’s Hand-Me-Downs 2021, features a collaboration with Magnus Maxine, inspired from her recent solo exhibition at Stanley’s, “The Mind is Kind: Dipped, Died, Dried, Machine Pieced & Tied.”
Maxine is a craft-based conceptual artist whose practice is ritualized through processes of natural plant-based fabric dyes developed in Maxine’s outdoor studio in her backyard. Part alchemy, part Youtube-science, the processes for dyeing her quilts remain in a state of constant flux due to weather, material, and environmental changes, thus creating a handmade and varied result gleaned from materials found in and around her home.
Maxine’s visual language assumes a unique and introspective perspective that is ambitious and conversational with her historical counterparts. The tactile nature of quilts and paintings oscillates in a space between painting and sculpture. This duality between flatness and dimensionality, roughness and smoothness, adds another nuanced quality to her work.
How do you integrate up-cycling into your process?
I find remnants sourced from old materials. The natural world is rich and loaded with potential. Reworking these materials combined with traditional natural dyeing methods creates new information and meaning. To use something that has been thought to be used up is so satisfying and allows expression through ingenuity and thoughtfulness.
What was your experience working with natural dyeing at OB and the process?
The wonderful thing about the natural dye process is that there’s a method to the madness and yet, it can always be distorted and lends itself to experimentation – transcending the ‘mistake’ by honoring all possibilities.
Featuring
- Magnus’s Studio Apron re-constructed of salvaged materials, and Large Boat and Tote bag Kakishibu dyed denim, corduroy and studio scraps dyed in experimental colors.
Magnus Maxine: The Mind is Kind: Dipped, Died, Dried, Machine Pieced, and Tied at Stanleys House.