Wood spoon farm
Artist residency
Artistic Research as a real approach to change
Robert Hughes
“The essence of the avant-garde myth is that the artist is a precursor; the truly significant work of art is the one that prepares the future”
“The Sword in the Stone: The Arts as Harbingers of Social Change” by Raymond L. Forbes
2025-2026 research collaboration with RISD
Fiber Matters: making with the remainder
Our ongoing research project “Scaling For Flax Sake” explores what variables are necessary for the opening of a flax-skutching mill in Southern New England. It’s feasability hinges on there being sufficient growers, who in turn depend on there being a market for long-line flax. The mill itself also seeks a market for the by/co-products left there, namely tow, seed and chive.
Explorations of what can be made with these materials were conducted through a term-long collaborations with the Rhode Island School of Design, led by Professor Markus Berger and Leeland McPhail, critic and founder of Here Here, an architectural design practice committed to material responsibility and communal action based in Providence, RI, USA.
Findings from Fiber Matters will be shared with the public summer 2026, with an opening reception in Providence on May 22, 2026.
Scaling For Flax Sake a collaboration with Hawk and Handsaw Farm, where a quarter acre of flax was grown, cultivated and processed.
2026 artist researchers:
tracy jonsson-laboy
In 2026 artist Tracy Jonsson-Laboy explores what can be made with flax, tow, chive and finished linen materials through her project “Ecosystem of Material Intelligence-Land Based Systems.”
This work connects material, system and meaning through ceramics, textile arts, and material experimentation.
Background image: Detail from “Fortune Favors the Bold,”
Tracy Jonsson-Laboy, 2024
Linen and mixed materials on cotton
