Deborah Yaffe

Through my work, I explore the relationship between the body and nature, the process of time and personal history, and the cycle of growth and decay. I am inspired by the natural world, and use materials found and gathered in the environment, plants, branches, and fibers. By working with these materials, I form a relationship with the places they come from.

Currently I am using fibers; usually fibers considered “waste”, leftover from processing. Finding value in the discarded is important to me, a way of honoring resources in a disposable age.

My recent works are two sided hangings that explore frailty, and ask the question “how fragmented can something be before it falls apart?” Fiber literally shows us that sometimes things can hang by a thread and still stay together.

Focused on process, I am driven by the material and a desire to converse with it. At times my creative process recalls a spider spinning a web from the fiber of her own body, my Italian grandfather, a tailor, making his livelihood working with fabric and thread, a bird gathering twigs and mud to build its nest. The process is basic and elemental, in the natural world.