The boldness of rope
- Seth’s pieces range from jewellery and wearable art to large-scale installations
- His techniques give rope spatial form without knots or wire
- He has collaborated with Orange Culture, Nigeria’s boundary-pushing label
Seth Damm’s wearable pieces and room-sized installations in cotton rope were born during creative experimentation in the 2000s, when he turned to the material for a jewellery show. “I loved the smell of it and the feel of it,” he shares. After moving through printmaking, performance and other visual media, Seth’s practice landed with rope and has not looked back since. Influenced by his artistic background, he approaches colour in a painterly way, beginning with hand dyeing the fibre in ombré sequences for each piece. The making moves between table and mirror, as he shapes the rope on the flat, holding it against himself in reflection, taking it back and forth between the table and the mirror until the piece concludes. “Once the rope form sits on a body, it transforms into an expressive object that had not existed seconds ago,” he says.
INTERVIEW
I de-strand rope, take it apart, sandwich it around a length of rope and whip the middle part to create junctures that hold everything in place. I also do a lot of hidden stitching. Every time I pass the needle through, it has to go right through the middle, otherwise it might be visible. While these are examples of my core techniques, they do not encapsulate the entirety of my process.
I do not feel any limitations from the material. Every day is different and this feeling comes through in the way I make my pieces. I am curious about what I will find if I stay with this one material. Like a guitar player exploring an instrument’s chords and melodies, I enjoy the tone of rope.
The name comes from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. I was drawn to his idea that small, cumulative actions create change, much like how individual fibres, twisted together, gain strength. In my early pieces, I stencilled his words directly into the rope.
New Orleans is intensely expressive and that is why I am here. The city holds its influences close to the surface, set between a swamp and a river. It pushes me out of my introspective nature. Everything is heightened here, including weather, people and food. Mardi Gras also became a space to test experimental techniques.
