Standing on Shoulders: How Fibre Artists Learn From the Past — and When to Let Go

A Confession, and a Question

I've been thinking about influence lately. Specifically, about how much of what we make is truly our own — and how much is a conversation with everything we've absorbed, consciously or not, from the artists who came before us.

I should say upfront: I'm not speaking from a position of authority here. This is just something I've been sitting with, and I'm curious whether it resonates with others who work in fibre and textiles.

What I've noticed, over years of looking at contemporary fibre art, is that influence runs deep in this medium. Deeper, perhaps, than in some others. You can often trace a clear line from a maker's work back to the artists they admire — the same compositional instincts, the same material choices, the same emotional register. Sometimes that lineage is worn openly and proudly. Sometimes it seems less conscious. Either way, it's there.

And I find myself wondering: is that a problem? Or is it simply how art has always worked?

The Artists Who Changed Everything

It's worth pausing on the artists who genuinely did shift the conversation — because what's interesting about them is how deliberately they broke from what came before.

Anni Albers trained at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, at a time when weaving was considered a lesser discipline even within that progressive institution. She absorbed the technical rigour of the tradition and then used it to make something entirely her own — geometric, intellectual, abstract work that the art world eventually had to take seriously on its own terms. Her 1949 solo exhibition at MoMA was the first ever given to a textile artist. She got there by learning the language deeply enough to speak it in a completely new way.

Magdalena Abakanowicz is someone whose impact I find genuinely profound. The Polish sculptor and fibre artist — working from the 1960s onwards — created monumental woven forms, her famous Abakans, that were unlike anything the art world had seen. Enormous, organic, hanging textile sculptures that felt alive. She didn't ask whether fibre could be sculpture. She simply made it so, with such force and conviction that the question became irrelevant. Her work reminds me that the most powerful artistic statements are often the ones made without apology.

Faith Ringgold did something similar with quilting — a medium with deep roots in African American women's tradition. She didn't abandon that tradition. She built on it, added narrative painting, added her own political voice, and created something that was unmistakably hers. The tradition was the foundation, not the ceiling.

Sheila Hicks has spent decades making fibre installations that blur the line between weaving, sculpture, and architecture. Her work is in major museum collections worldwide. What strikes me about Hicks is the sheer consistency of her own visual language — you know a Sheila Hicks immediately. That kind of recognisability takes years to develop, and it doesn't come from following anyone else's lead.

And then there's Dana Barnes — an American fibre artist working with premium wools whose work I find quietly extraordinary. She is, if I'm honest, my personal favourite among contemporary practitioners. There's an intimacy and material intelligence in her work that I find deeply compelling. She works with wool in a way that feels both ancient and completely of the moment — and she has, unmistakably, her own voice.

These artists all learned from tradition. But at some point, each of them made a decision — conscious or not — to stop looking outward and start listening inward.

My Own Approach — For What It's Worth

I want to be careful here not to sound prescriptive, because I genuinely don't think there's one right way to develop as an artist. But I can share what works for me, and why.

I deliberately choose not to follow what other fibre artists are making. I don't look at their work regularly, I don't follow their processes, and I try not to let their aesthetic decisions become part of my visual vocabulary. This isn't about arrogance or indifference — it's protective. My creative process is slow and very internal, and I've found that the more I look outward, the more I risk unconsciously absorbing what I see. I don't want to compare myself to others, feel the pressure to keep up, or find myself making decisions based on what seems to be resonating in the broader conversation.

Keeping my practice insular is, for me, the best way I know to keep it honest.

But I want to be clear: this is a choice I've made after years of working in this medium. It's not where I started, and I don't think it's where most artists should start.

The Case for Learning From Others

Learning from the artists who came before you is, I think, one of the most valuable things a new fibre artist can do — not to replicate what they made, but to understand how they solved problems. How did they handle scale? How did they think about structure? How did they develop a relationship with a particular material over time?

Technique is a language, and like any language, you learn it by immersion. You study how others have used it before you develop your own fluency. There's no shame in that — it's how craft knowledge has been passed down for centuries, and it's how most artists find their footing.

The question I find interesting is: what happens next? At what point does learning from others become leaning on others? When does influence become imitation — and does it matter if it does?

I don't have a definitive answer. I'm not sure anyone does. But I suspect the artists who find their own voice most fully are the ones who eventually become curious about what they think, rather than what they've absorbed. Who start asking: what do I want to say with this material? What does this medium make possible that nothing else does? What can only I make, from where I stand, with what I've lived?

An Open Question

I'm genuinely curious about how other fibre artists navigate this. Do you actively seek out the work of artists you admire, and find it generative? Or do you find, as I do, that too much looking outward can crowd out your own instincts?

Is there a moment you can point to when you felt your own voice emerge — and what made that possible?

I'd love to hear how others think about this. There's no right answer, and I'm aware that my own approach is just one way of working. But it's a question I think is worth asking — because the fibre artists who move me most are always, unmistakably, themselves.