Entwined with emotion Weaving work bonded artist with late grandmother The Creators
By: AV Kitching Posted: 3:00 AM CST Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024

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This article was published 28/12/2024 (595 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When she first started weaving four years ago, Cristal Brooks was in the throes of grief after experiencing a significant loss.

Making art became a route to process her profound sadness after her grandmother, Doreen Florence Brooks, passed away.

She’d never worked with textiles before, but felt compelled to create, utilizing a medium her grandmother, an accomplished seamstress, was familiar with.

Using scrap material her grandmother had saved from her own sewing projects, Brooks weaved through her pain, manipulating cotton, cord, wool, lace and yarn into textured artworks.

“My sister, who like my grandmother has a talent for sewing, acquired a Tupperware container of scrap material and we went through it together. I took some pieces of material from my aunt’s bridal dresses and curtains, both of which my grandma had made, and incorporated them, as well as some macramé cord she had used, into my art,” Brooks says.

Her first piece, using scraps from her grandmother’s curtains, became a wall hanging in shades of blue and green that she gifted to a family member.

She made more pieces for friends and family and in 2021 began posting her work online. She was gratified when people started commissioning their own pieces from her.

Creating custom works, Brooks weaves with different-sized yarns, cotton cord and rope, and fabrics like velvet and lace. She continues to incorporate her grandmother’s material into her art — transforming pieces from shirts, and scraps from dresses and curtains into her wall hangings.

Working from her home studio, surrounded by looms and drawers filled with colour-sorted fabrics, she usually starts weaving with no firm plan in mind.

“When I create, I express myself in ways that words cannot. I sit in my space, turn on some music and start weaving. I have no plan, I don’t draw anything out… it’s just whatever speaks to me at the moment when I am sitting in my feelings,” she says.

“Whatever the feeling I am experiencing, that’s what comes out in the final weaving.”

Each weave she creates is unique, and she instinctively knows which technique works best with which material. Her finished works hang on dowels or driftwood she sources from Hecla Island.

Clients are happy to allow Brooks creative freedom. They share their favourite colours and pictures of where they plan to hang the art, but the rest is very much up to the artist.

“Not any two weaves I’ve done are the same. Each piece I make, I use different techniques depending on the fabric. I know what can produce the best texture of the fabric or material I want to use.”

Having creative free rein is a blessing, she says. She is honoured people want the art she makes hanging on the walls of their homes.

“Sometimes people see something else they might like and want something similar but more often than not they tell me to go and do what I need to do. That is the best, because then I can be my creative self,” she says.

She’s begun to incorporate materials holding meaning for others into her work. Her most recent creation is for a friend whose mother passed away.

“I used pieces from her housecoat to make something for him and his two sisters,” she says. “It’s an irreplaceable feeling to be able to create for others. To bring joy and emotion to their faces when they see my creations, to trigger a memory, to make them feel something… it’s the best.”

Brooks’ most current works can be found at Little Art Boutique, while custom art can be ordered via her website fibreflocreations.com and Instagram account @fibreflocreations.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca