Amanda Browder

Fabric sculpture artist Amanda Browder discusses 'Metropolis Sunrise,' her artistic and community process in creating public art, and her introduction to sewing and fabrics growing up in Missoula, Montana. This interview was recorded on April 22, 2020 in New York City.
For podcast audio with images visit ArtsW's YouTube Channel

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Sewing Community is part of ArtsWestchester's Folk Arts Program, made possible in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.   

Transcript

Various: 0:06

In school when you would fill out what your parents did for a living, I would write"trimmings" not knowing what the heck it was. When they opened up the window to the sweatshop, I used to go play on the roof. Isn't that a great place for your kid to play? I said God, let the morning come quick so I can go to my sewing machine. I think I'm nuts.

Aaron Paige: 0:27

Hello and welcome to sewing stories, the podcast where local Westchester area residents share their life in fabric and thread. I a m your host Aaron Page, Director of Folk Arts at ArtsWestchester, the officially designated arts council for Westchester County,New York. For the last several months, ArtsWestchester has been teaming up with Amanda Browder, a Brooklyn-based fabric a rtist to transform our nine story building in White Plains into a cascading colorful fabric installation. All of the stories heard in this podcast were collected from individual volunteers who've been involved in the building of this monumental work of public art. While the project is currently on hold because of COVID-19, our hope is that the s tories shared here, will in some small way, sustain a nd deepen the social fabric of our sewing community. In this week's episode, you will hear from fabric sculptor Amanda Browder herself, as she discusses metropolis sunrise, her artistic and community process in creating public art, and her introduction to sewing and fabrics growing up in Missoula, Montana. Enjoy!

Amanda Browder: 1:30

Now, I am working on a project called Metropolis Sunrise. And Metropolis Sunrise is a large-scale fabric installation that is going to be draped on the outside of the facade of the building, which is ArtsWestchester, in White Plains, New York. About a year ago, actually two years I think. Janet, the Director of ArtsWestchester got in touch with me and we started talking about doing a project. Like most of these public art pieces, they take a couple of years to kind of like get the funds, working with the city and different perspectives to try to organize this large-scale work. What I do is I work with donated fabrics from people in the community and then we come together during these public sewing days to stitch together the project, very slowly in the beginning, and then more aggressively towards the end, really sitting down and creating the larger aspects of the piece that's going to go up on the building. You know, working with structural engineers to actually erect this large scale fabric piece. It is public art, you know, and I kind of think of that word, public art as two kind of sides to this project. I think a lot of times we see public art is art that's out in the physical space within our community. A lot of times not involving the community other than just being a passive viewer. And so what I love about these works is that they really encourage people to think about how they can be involved, like literally infuse their own personal history, personal connection to the community within the art project. During the donations. We've been asking people to tell us little stories, you know, histories of some of the fabric that they brought to the project so that when we have the public sewing days, we can acknowledge and support the people that are actually coming and participating, volunteering so that when the piece goes up, there can be this tangible, physical connection, to people in the neighborhood, in the community, to why this is a celebration of all of us coming together to make this beautiful object. It's a celebration of our physical space. It's a celebration of being a neighbor. If you were to come to one of the s ewing days, traditionally people come and there's fabric that's donated and what we do is we're using tables that are at the space to create these long stretches. And we're taking all the fabrics, organizing them by color, so t here a re all blues, all greens, all yellows, and then what we're doing is placing them on the table, like a puzzle, and creating these long strips that can end up being around 90 feet long. What's awesome about these strips is that they become almost like a scroll, right? A scroll of different fabrics. When you're building them, you really kind of see it close up. Like you're seeing the difference between one fabric going to next fabric. Imagine stepping back two blocks away and seeing this strip of fabric in i t's flat surface. And so you'll just see all blue or all black or all green b ecause we're trying to get people to shift their minds from the small object, which is the small donation, to the larger installation, which is covering this building, increasing the sense of scale. What we're building are these long bolts of fabric. We're rebuilding bolts of fabric. One thing that hasn't happened yet and which will happen later in Metropolis Sunrise, is when we start putting those bolts of fabric together. It's kind of like the puzzle to create this final design. Anytime I talk about these projects, it's a" we." I talk about it in the"we" form because we do it together. It's not just Amanda Browder sewing this piece together and then it goes up. It may be under my name because I'm designing it. I'm fabricating the process. I'm kind of getting this whole thing together. At the same time, the people that are putting it together are ArtsWestchester. It's the volunteers, it's the city people. It's all this collection of people that are building this thing that goes up in the end. And so it does break down that authorship. And I want people to promote it to their friends and to say, I helped build that. I've made that. They should be celebrating it. I want them to be celebrating...I'm celebrating them! I like activating nontraditional spaces into public sewing day spaces. And I do like when I'm working with an institution that is putting on the project, introducing them to the idea of learning about other collectives within the community to work with. So not just sending out an email to their friends and saying,"Hey institutions that we're friends with already, do you want to do something?" But actually pushing the art institutions to think about who they could collectively connect with. It's about finding a list of different communities from all around an area and also kind of like pushing art institutions to really own up to that word community. This is an opportunity for them to not only expand beyond their traditional group, but to learn from a different community that maybe they didn't know about and vice versa. Because what happens is that...what I find the most successful is you physically have to go to those spaces and when you do, it opens up the understanding that you want to work within their safe space versus you expecting all the audience to come to your safe space. That's the most important part of this project. Forcing institutions to try to get outside their safe space to let down their walls and say, okay, fine, we will come to you. What space would you like this creative experience to be so that your audience can feel welcome. Being welcomed in an art space does not happen...very often. I mean, even myself who feels like I'm in the world, I go to galleries and a lot of times the table's really high. There's a person behind the counter. They don't want to talk to you and you're like,"are you supposed to speak?" Like you feel in trouble just walking in. I don't find that positive. I find that exclusionary and disappointing. Um, I want my artistic experience to be inspirational and questioning, you know, a place of contemplation and education, not feeling like I'm in trouble just walking in the door. The word community is not unilaterally the same in any small pocket. I mean, we can attempt to try to control it as much as we can when we hold these public sewing days like, Oh, we want to reach out to this community and this community. But those people might say, I don't want to come. And you're like, great, that's totally cool. That's an experience you have to go with. And that's the vulnerable aspect of it too. It doesn't always set up a place of success, but that's okay because sometimes you will have success and you have to embrace that. Also, you have a place to say, Oh, why wasn't it successful? How do we fix it? What's something that we need to do beyond this one experience? And that's something that institutions should start thinking about beyond just, you know, having a free night once a year or once a month. Institutions need to make change. It can't just be on the shoulders of the community. It's actually the arts community that needs to shift the thinking. What's been really great about this project and actually working with you Aaron is learning about the different groups around the Westchester area. For example, the Bennett Music Conservatory, a location that is a house. You know, we're not working in a large sewing space with sewing machines. We're actually walking into, what seems to be a living room, where they hold music lessons. So just expanding the notion of what is an artist space or a building space and asking people who might be close by to there to say, we're going to transform this space for a temporary period of time into a sewing experience. We're not going to know exactly how it's going to go, but if we have tables, we have chairs, we have electricity and maybe some snacks...I'll bring the music, we'll have some fun. And so what's great about the sewing days is when those are set up, I put everything in my car, I fill it floor to ceiling with fabric and sewing machines and pins and scissors. And we put up some signs, you know, encouraging people to come in to the sewing day. We do a little, um, you know, advertising and then people just show up. Any person that walks in the door, I want to shake their hand, say hello, introduce myself, and just make them feel welcome because it is scary. Because Even if it's their space, if it's their church or their community center, you're in their space kind of like changing it. And so, I like to make sure that they know that I've appreciated them asking us or allowing us to come into their space and do this public sewing day. And then if sometimes people feel excited, then they come and help or you know, they're already planning to help cause they love to sew. And then it just happens. People start chatting with each other. We set up sewing machines around the room and make sure that people are in a happy space and play a little soft music and you know, just give people opportunities to try stuff out. Everyone has what they love to do and some people are, they're dedicated sewers and they just go right to the sewing machine. And some people are like, nah, I'm not sure, I'll do some pinning. And then, and then I do these kind of teaching sessions of like showing people how to sew. So I'll sit down with anybody that wants to learn. Even two year olds. Like my favorite thing to do is give them the pedal, we put it in their hands and you know, machines are scary. Like they could, they can put that needle through your finger. But if you give the kid that power but then put the safety over to me...and so I sit at the machine with the fabric and I say okay go. And they squeeze that pedal and it makes that really loud sound. But I'm in control. I know it's happening. This thrilling kind of like moment happens with the kids cause they realize I've given them the ability to make something. They're in control of the experience. We're working together, you and I, and it's addictive. During my projects, I really try to use contemporary art as a way to welcome people, everybody into the space and to say, you are an important human. You are somebody that's bringing something important to this space and this project needs you and appreciates you. We do that through talking with them, introducing the project, teaching people how to sew and then hoping that they feel embraced by the project and feel that their creative spirit is being supported so that they feel more interested in stepping forward. During the sewing days in the beginning it's always kind of a light turnout. I never know who's going to show up and then it's kind of cool. It's exponential, like this is not an exclusionary experience. It's something that welcomes everybody, all abilities, all ages. It's a celebration of people just coming together and talking over the table and using the practice of p inning or s ewing as a way to get to know somebody they don't know...possibly their neighbor. So one of the stories that was pretty cool w ere these two women who met at the Greenburgh Public Library. Both of them were just chatting, you know, these are two women that had come to the project multiple different times at different locations, at ArtsWestchester, this kind of thing. One woman, her daughter had brought her b ecause h er father had just passed and this woman was trying to find things to do, you know, to kind of get out into the community and be more active after the loss of her husband. And then this other younger woman came just to like connect and be part of the project. So they started chatting and they both realized they speak Spanish. They started speaking Spanish and the coolest thing happened. It gives me chills just even talking about it. They both ended up finding out that they were both from the same place in Peru. The older woman had told this story as that she had gone to this high school a long time ago and it was just starting. It was a Catholic high school. It was run by these nuns and she was one of the first classes. But they still needed to raise a lot of money. So she was kind of like the first group that started in the class This younger woman was actually of the first class when they finally raised enough money and they were able to facilitate this larger expansion. And so it was just this awesome moment where these two people from two different locations somehow, you know, had started their lives in a similar place. Very, very small population. Gone out into their lives, done different things and then somehow landed back at this Sewing Day. I mean it's just phenomenal. It's, it's an example of our lives. It's an example of how paths can cross accidentally, even though we don't realize what our personal histories are. It connects how similar we are, even though we don't know each other. Even though you don't know somebody, there might be some history of connection. I mean it even makes me cry. I'm a very emotional person so even talking about those stories just, you couldn't have asked for anything better. Westchester is such a large area and a lot of New Yorkers, especially transplants, who have moved to the city and don't always go up to Westchester, I don't think they understand how diverse and unique Westchester is. I mean there's the stereotype of like, the doctors and the lawyers that live up there, but there's also these massive communities that have been there for a long time. Immigrant communities who have started new lives and during the sewing days I feel like that comes about. We see people wanting to express their culture and to talk about it with other people. I mean there was the Ecuadorian family that came to ArtsWestchester and also at Sleepy Hollow and their whole family, I mean it was like grandparents, parents, cousins, and they're talking about how they organize dances. And I mean that is an opening to so many people that come to the sewing day that don't know that. It's an expression of a community that doesn't always get that platform to talk about their experience. It sets up this comfortable place for people just to say, Hey, who are you? You can kind of instigate people to feel proud about where they come from. You know, what their experiences with fabric, how they sew, why they sew. I think those kind of humorous, awesome, in-depth conversations, they conceptually infuse into the sculpture at the end. I mean the piece is going to be gorgeous, but whoever shows up, it's going to create the story that we're experiencing at that moment. That experience is the thing that builds the project. I mean it is the legs that puts this piece up and makes it representing like a physical representation of the community. How do we look at the fabrics beyond just the objects that they are? Each piece of fabric has kind of a timeline. We have the past of it, which is like where did this fabric come from? Someone brought it and they are representing their family, for example. I mean it could be just that they had this fabric and you know they had it in high school and they're ready to get rid of it. Or it could be, I had a woman once give me all of her bridesmaids' fabric and the wedding didn't even happen. She just eloped. The fabric, when it arrives to the donation place, is infused with that information, whether it's told or not. Then there's the presence of us sitting in the sewing day and we're taking these pieces of fabric. We're cutting them up we are placing together these big monochromatic swaths and even those things become a daily chapter of the people that show up, the history of the fabric from the people that brought it. It's like a town hall of stories that are all convening during this public sewing day. The fabric starts inspiring people. They start saying like, Oh gosh, this fabric, this is cool. Like"oh what would I make out of this?""What would I do with this?" And people start wanting and supporting certain fabrics that they find and they feel a kinship with it, which is almost like having a kinship with a person that you may or may not know their stories. And they make up their own stories too. So they start fabricating future thoughts like,"Oh this fabric, you know, this reminds me of, I should, I would love to see a dress made out of this." And that in itself is now connecting two random places, or even three, into one final project. What I think is even cooler, and I think is a little scary for some people is you know, we're taking this thing which is so intimate, right? And we're putting it outside. You know, dealing with rain and wind and the elements, which is not a sensitive warm space like where you would put a quilt, for example, like in your bedroom..in a private space. We're putting it out in the world. We're putting it on display. So I like that shift. I like kind of pushing people into thinking like okay, what is the close knit important things about you? At the same time, like what happens if it's out in the public. Traditional public art what you do is you propose a project, you find a fabricator, you have a budget, you have a timeline for when it's like halfway done, two-thirds done, and then the finishing install. With this there are so many variables. We might not have enough fabric, we might not have any volunteers show up. We might lose spaces as we go along. We might have a pandemic where it changes everything. And you know, through this pandemic, I think it's kind of reminded people to put a little reset. Stuff happens in life. I mean this is life. And we kind of have to embrace those challenges and brainstorm ways of being successful. And accept when things change because, in the end, it's about the experience. This pandemic has changed how we progress every day and it's shifted our notions of walking to work and traveling to work or going to visit your family and what happens in between. And so that's part of this project. Things will change and shift and as a group we all figure out ways to make it work and it will be up there. It's going to be a cool piece when the piece is up. It's just going to take a little longer. You know the one important thing that we, as a group, need to remember is that Westchester was kind of the first place that this pandemic kind of started hitting. So we were kind of at the epicenter of where this all started as it kind of infused down to New York City. I don't know. I just think that's important because you know it's adding to the story of the project, which is the pandemic happened in the middle of a public art piece and it also happened in Westchester. The beginning of the pandemic, it didn't happen just in Seattle. You know it really happened on the East coast in Westchester. I'm working in the studio by myself now and I'm enjoying it. I have to say it's like, I feel like I'm talking to the fabric in the space. I'm like,"Oh Hey, I know you!" Memory lane. It goes through memory lane a lot. One of the best memory lanes that happened today was that I found your wife's dress that I cut up. She did not want it to be cut up and she didn't know it was donated, but that's okay. She's happy. We're all, we're all good, but we had an awesome laugh together today, finding her work dress that was completely cut up and it's going to go into the project. Everybody has to look for the black and white leopard, which is an amazing print for a dress, just so you know. Not the saucy kind, it's a professional dress, but the pattern is phenomenal. Even though we've made this pause, we're still working forward. I love that we're getting time to work on this audio and you know, we sent out the letter, all the volunteers just giving them an update and we got this plethora of people just writing back such amazing things and showing us how they have been making masks at home for people with fabric. I mean fabric is now...the one cool thing that's happened with this project is that sewing and fabric, like discarded fabric, has become important within our world. All of a sudden I'm getting calls from people who are like, how do I, so I need to make a mask. Never has that happened. Usually people are giving me their sewing machines. They're like, please, I haven't touched this thing in 20 years. It's just sitting in my closet. You obviously will use it. I do hope that that as a tool becomes more important in our world. And then what I hope too is that when people come to the final installation of this project, they'll see how all this fabric together is a representation of our community and a celebration of us all coming back together. The one thing that people talk about with my work is that they immediately want to say they are quilts, and I do not call them quilts with respect to quilts. They are quilt-like. They use systems that are kind of similar to quilting, which is taking scraps of fabric that are discarded, sewing them together into flat surfaces to create these patterns. The biggest shift is that these are building sized and they don't keep you warm at night, for example. They don't have a function that's similar to quilts. Why I try to make that distinction is it kind of goes back to the story of when I first started doing this project. So imagine me, I went to University of Wisconsin in Madison for grad school. I mean, originally I'm from Missoula, Montana. From Montana, and then going to Madison and then I got a job teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago and I was young. I just, you know, it was at a a time period where painting was God in the contemporary art world. And I wanted to be in the contemporary art world. I had just gotten my degree, but I loved to sew. It was something... I was so attracted to going to secondhand stores, finding these different fabrics, thinking about the people who bought them or you know, whoever was a designer that made it, what was their idea? And just thinking about the origins of all these materials. And then I would make these soft sculptures, which are smaller kind of more gallery based object things. And usually it was about the contrast of the object that I was building to the fabric that was being put into it. As I was working, I just could not get the support from the contemporary art world for the work that I was making. I was constantly put into this camp of craft or you know, almost like women's work. And when I say that I think about my inherent identity. So yes, I am a woman. I also sew. But I am an artist. I think a lot of times when I was put into contemporary art shows, they constantly wanted to talk about my work as cute or or that it was craft related, in a pejorative way. And I hated that. I thought that was so demeaning. I was like, wait, just because I sew and just because I'm a woman, that means that I'm put immediately into this craft camp. And I resented people for that because I was like, no, I'm making sculptures There's a difference between sculpture and what you're calling craft because, see, at the same time I have a high support for people that work in craft. I think what they do is absolutely phenomenal and that includes quilting and sewing. I guess I always just try to remind people that these are not functional objects. They have quilt and craft-like experiences around them. Women that sew...that is a stereotype that's been projected for a very long period of time. And I try to break that by saying, okay, everybody should learn how to sew. It's not just a gendered experience. And also sewing doesn't have to be just craft related. It can be sculptural. We're seeing a resurgence of it in the contemporary art world right now. I mean, you see it in the Armory in New York City. Many people are shifting over to fiber because I think there's just this excitement and need to kind of go back to a material that is something private and we kind of understand it and opens to a larger community of people. You know, a little bit of my first project, which is called Rapunzel, is based on my frustration of just not having a big space, not feeling supported by my artistic community and saying, well, fine, FU. I'm going to eliminate the gallery from my process. I don't even need your support. I'm going to do this from my home. I'm going to sew all the fabric that I've collected in five years and just throw it out my apartment window and then call some friends and see if they want to come and check it out. And really it's for the people who are just walking down the street. That's who it's really for. And it was successful. It ended up being this awesome piece. You can see it on my website. It's called Rapunzel and I don't know, it was such a release. It was Rapunzel. It was me going, Oh my gosh, I need to fix this and what is wrong with you people? That was the beginning of me seeing how positive and how cool it was to work outside of that naysayer community, that kind of exclusionary system within the contemporary art world, through museums, teaching institutions everything and saying, I don't need all of you. I mean, the one thing I love to talk to are art students or students who are trying to think about how to do this on their own. I love showing them ways where they can build it without the system. Because the second you start leaving that to the side, it really alleviates a lot of the stress and the self doubt and you really start building something that is completely honest to yourself. So I grew up in Missoula, Montana. Both my parents worked. My dad worked at the forest service and my mom was a midwife. My mom worked from home, but teaching me how to sew, she just didn't have enough time and she saw it as an important thing. And so I remember when I was 9 or 10, she signed me up for 4H. There was a sewing class. What's really cool is that I just found the first skirt that I made in that class. It was at this woman's basement down the street from my house. I remember riding my bike there all the time. This is such a Montana experience. You'd go in the basement, there'd be like three machines and all of us girls there. The sewing machines were shotgun refillers. So you had sewing machines and shotguns. Two things happening at the same time. So if we got sick of sewing, we would fill shotgun ammo for hunting. But I remembered, uh, sewing this skirt and it was a red fabric with little black Scottie dogs on it as the pattern with little bow ties. And I just found the skirt. I wore it for this fashion show. I remember walking down...there were tons of people in the fashion show and I won fourth place, overall. It was a big deal for me. I got a big ribbon. It kind of even goes back to the gendered experience because I grew up in a very feminist household. My mom, she changed the law so midwives are legal in the state of Montana. She's very active politically. And so I've always had that sense that even though I was a woman, I had no fear about getting something done. I also knew the kind of gendered aspects of being a woman. I knew that stereotypically women were taught to sew and cook. And I remember after the fashion show, they took us into these sessions and they taught you how to do laundry and it just infuriated me. I was so mad that they were doing this. I mean generally it is a pretty good idea to learn these things, but at the time I was like, this is our culture trying to force me to do, to be a housewife. I was just so mad about it. It is important because I think it is also part of my inspiration of not being scared to go forward and to use anything that I want to build something as big as I feel is important. In high school. and this kind of thing, I would go to the secondhand stores in Montana. So this is back in the nineties, early nineties. The secondhand stores were phenomenal because all these farmers and ranchers and all these people from all over the place were donating stuff from the fifties and sixties. So the fabrics were just electric and crazy colors and nobody wanted to make anything secondhand. So it was just filled to the gills with magical vintage material between clothing and just stock fabric. So I would buy this stuff. I'd take it home and I started just making things. I didn't think it was art at the time. I didn't know you could actually be an artist as a job. I thought just being creative with something that I just constantly had to do. I was like, oh, I'm going to draw today. And I would just make these pillow coverings. They were almost like drawings out of fabric. Oh how is this fabric going to work with this? And that's where it kind of like started, where fabric was just...the patterns were such an inexpensive free resource to work with. And I didn't have an interest in mixing color or working within the portal of the canvas. I wanted my fabrics to be infused within my life and I wanted those fabrics to not just exist in a pillow. I wanted them to be on the wall and to cover a chair and I wanted this electric disco ball of color. And if you ever come to my studio or my apartment, you will see there is fabric everywhere. I change it constantly. Color makes me happy. I remember in high school, I was asked in senior year...so I went to Hellgate high school, which is an amazing name for a high school to go to, but I lived in the Hellgate Canyon. So that's the reason they named it that. One of the teachers asked if I wanted to be the photography editor for the yearbook. And yearbook was definitely for the cheerleaders and for the popular kids. And I was definitely the artist who was not in that. I wasn't even an artist at that time. It was just a creative, odd one. So I was like, you want me to do this? And again, at that time, this is pre-digital, so it is all working in the dark room. And I had taken classes on photography at this Rocky Mountain school of photography. So I knew how to do it and I was like, yeah, okay. And it was the first time that a teacher had introduced to me this idea that like, Oh no, you can make a living off of making creative things. And it blew my mind. I had no idea that all this labor and work that I had gone into...being creative and learning about materials and experimenting with photography as well as fabric and sculpture and paper mache, and clay. And all of it was built into strengthening my creative muscle and to feel strong to go out and just call myself an artist and say"no, today, I am labeling myself an artist." Community, who sees me, artist right here. And I think there's a power and an intensity that happens when you do that. You know, when she passed, it was a big deal for me because she was the one that kind of said, Oh no, you can be an artist all the time. And that just was the introduction to doing all of this. So yeah, that's why I choke up because it was a gift. The one sewing machine story that I have is that when I graduated from high school, my mom ended up, as a gift, buying me a sewing machine. And it's funny cause like, I think at that time I was sewing a bunch, but I just didn't think of it as something important to me. I just thought it was like drawing. I thought it was just like a tool and so to get a gift for graduation, which to me was like a really big deal. The gift of the sewing machine...is such an important sewing machine for me. I felt like it was like this shepherding into this life of working with the sewing machine. I feel like my mom intuitively saw that it was an important object and she needed to get one for me for my life for the future. And I still have it and I still use it. I have to admit, during this pandemic I actually have brought it home cause I'm trying to clean it somehow. It was one of the first computerized Vikings and so I'm a little nervous to take it apart. It helped start all of my projects from the beginning. The piece Rapunzel was sewn on that machine. Every time, in the beginning when I had sewing days, I would bring that machine to the project a nd that one always came with m e.

Aaron Paige: 33:03

Thank you for listening to sewing stories. Join us for next week's episode with Ken Ray, mayor of the village of sleepy hollow as he shares stories and adventures of his time working with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.