A rich weaving of traditions
- Amber creates layered pieces of wall art that thread together multicultural influences
- Her sculptural compositions employ techniques including weaving, darning and appliqué
- She is fascinated by the interplay between global weaving traditions
For Amber M. Jensen, weaving offers a way to connect to her Scandinavian roots. She comes from a line of Danish and Norwegian seamstresses and tailors, and is interested in the intersection between Scandinavian, Appalachian, Indigenous and Germanic textile traditions. To immerse herself deeper in the subject, she moved to a small town in western North Carolina to explore authentically American weaving traditions. Amber came to weaving via a post-graduate weaving class after studying drawing and painting at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. “It sparked the artist in me that I always knew was there,” she says. Amber’s signature style involves weaving a first layer of fabric, then incorporating additional layers through an improvisational process of darning, stitching, needle felting and appliqué. She crafts rugs, wall hangings and accessories whose bright colours, nature motifs and geometric patterns reflect her varied, continent-spanning influences.
Discover her work
INTERVIEW
In my textile pieces, I try to recreate what I can do with a pencil and gouache. For example, I think of weaving as replicating colour wash, and embroidery as replicating organic pencil lines. I consider my first layer as a blank sheet of paper and I use the different techniques to add layers.
Living in Appalachia for a decade has been a formative experience. A group of local women once stumbled into my studio and recognised the weaving patterns of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers in my work. That was a pivotal moment because it made me realise the way that weaving can connect us.
An elder once told me that the cloth really comes to life when you pull it off the loom. On the loom, it is perfectly tensioned, but when you pull it off it, it loosens and becomes something else.
Weaving is my meditation. It is also a way for me to understand myself and the world. You can really only see about six inches at a time when you are weaving, so you have to stay in the moment.
