VICKI ESSIG •   PENLAND, NC

Vicki Essig is a full time artist living and working in the mountains of North Carolina. Studio work includes weaving and paper making, collecting and observing. Her work is quiet, contemplative and deliberate. Vicki’s professional career began over two decades ago, when she studied hand weaving, textiles and design. She later became proficient at working with uncommonly fine yarns and slowly developed a body of work that incorporated intricate patterns with remnants of nature and fragments of old books. She recently built a new studio where she will continues her exploration of textiles along with paper, and book arts. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and can be found in the collections of The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina; North Shore University HealthSystem in Chicago Illinois; Fidelity Investment Bank in Raleigh, North Carolina; as well as at Baylor University, the University of Washington, and the Universities of California at San Diego and Santa Cruz. 

"I walk. It calms my mind. I know just what to do next. My feet carry me forward. Mostly it’s routine, tranquil, and quiet. Occasionally I flush out a bird, a deer or two. Sometimes I come around a bend in the land and am delighted to see a dried pod, a tree full of galls or a vine that is particularly beautiful that day. I am in this place of meditation. This is how my weaving is to me. It too, is quiet and methodical. One thread after another carrying me forward. On a good day, I am surprised by the time that has slipped away as I witness where I have been and where I am going, traveling by foot or on the space in front of me at my loom. My contemplative pieces are a reminder that the small bits of nature that we all overlook, disregard and neglect are still there, waiting to be seen. In viewing my work, my hope is that, for at least a moment, you become lost in the discovery of the minute, the quiet of repetition, and the beauty of nature and pattern."

Silkworm statement: "These silk aprons were constructed entirely by silkworms. I raised more than 400 Bombyx mori (the caterpillar of the silkworm moth) for the sole purpose of having them create these pieces. The process begins when the silkworms hatch from their eggs and start to eat the pounds and pounds of mulberry leaves that I gather for them. After several weeks, they were ready to spin. By nature, they weave beautiful figure-eight patterns to form a cocoon. To do so, they need to attach their silk to two different planes, such as the corner of a box or the angle of a branch and a twig. To make these aprons, I simply removed one plane, requiring them to spin on flat surfaces—platforms cut to the size and shape of the dress pattern pieces. Because they couldn’t create a traditional cocoon, they wove their silk into flat panels of fabric. Once they had woven the individual pieces of the dress, other silkworms were choreographed into stitching them together—think Cinderella and the birds making her gown. No scissors, no thread, no needle: just silkworms, and a bit of guidance from the artist."