STANDARDS

Core Art Standards: VA2, VA5, VA10

CCSS: R1, R2, W3

Weaving Wonderful Worlds

How do these artists create immersive spaces using fiber art techniques?

How do these artists change spaces using fiber art?

Oct / Nov 2025

Written by Salomé Gómez

Transform everyday materials— things you might find around your classroom—into a three-dimensional artwork. Could you build an entire world filled with color and texture? Using fabric, yarn, and straw, the artists featured here create installations that spark curiosity.

Think of a space you see all the time. Now imagine filling it with color and texture. What materials could you use? The artists featured here use fabric, yarn, and straw to create installations. These three-dimensional artworks excite viewers as they move around them.

Honoring Tradition

Peruvian American artist Sarah Zapata was at a thrift store the first time she realized that fabrics could be used as materials for making art. The idea of doing this excited her so much that she decided to study fiber art.

Today Zapata uses coiling, latch-hooking (tying yarn onto fabric using a tool with a small hook and latch), and other traditional weaving methods that demand a lot of time. She carefully builds large-scale, abstract installations like her 2022 A resilience of things not seen, above. The site-specific work responds to and redefines the space. Zapata also juxtaposes the softness of her materials with the room’s rigid structure, an idea she emphasizes by adding bold stripes.

Zapata aims to honor her Hispanic roots by focusing on Peruvian crafts. She also invites viewers to think about their own associations with her materials. The artist explains, “Everyone has such a hunger for textiles because we are literally always surrounded by them.”

Sarah Zapata is a Peruvian American artist who studied fiber art. Today Zapata uses traditional weaving methods. These include coiling and latch-hooking, or tying yarn onto fabric using a small tool.

Zapata carefully builds largescale installations like the one at left. It’s called A resilience of things not seen. She completed it in 2022. The abstract work is site-specific, which means it was designed for the space it’s in. Zapata juxtaposes soft materials with the hard shape of the room. She emphasizes this with bold stripes.

Zapata focuses on Peruvian crafts and fiber art. She wants viewers to think about materials. “Everyone has such a hunger for textiles,” she says. “We are literally always surrounded by them.”

Natural Hideaway

Natural Nest

Before becoming an artist, Laura Lima studied philosophy, which helped shape the way she sees art and the world around her. In her work, the Brazilian artist invites people to think about new and unexpected ideas.

For her 2021 Communal Nest #3, above, Lima uses pieces of wood and straw hats that she carefully deconstructed and then wove back together. To create a natural aesthetic, she chose materials that are all the same color.

Though the suspended sculpture might not look like something you recognize right away, Lima imagined it as a kind of magical nest for imaginary birds. How might this artwork transform if it were suspended in a natural setting rather than an art gallery with plain white walls?

Laura Lima studied philosophy before making art. The Brazilian artist wants her work to give people new and surprising ideas.

Lima created Communal Nest #3, above, in 2021. She took apart straw hats, and then wove the straw back together, adding wood pieces. This sculpture is suspended, or hanging. Lima uses materials that are the same natural color.

The sculpture might not look familiar right away. But Lima imagined it as a nest for imaginary birds. Do you see the similarities?

Fibers in Technicolor

Fibers in Color

When American artist Sheila Hicks studied art at Yale University in the 1950s, few people paid attention to fiber arts. But Hicks, who has spent a great deal of time traveling around the world, loved to think outside the box, so she decided to experiment with textiles, which she describes as “a universal language.”

Combining ideas from design, architecture, and art, she wraps, weaves, and piles fibers like wool and linen to construct her vibrant artworks. For Hicks, color is the foundation. Texture, form, and the activation of space are secondary.

Hicks’s 2016-17 Escalade Beyond Chromatic Lands, above, is a massive installation that filled an industrial space originally used for making rope in Venice, Italy. Each of the mounds is a pile of fibers enclosed in a net. Together they suggest a rainbowlike avalanche, overwhelming viewers with saturated color and a desire to start climbing.

Hicks insists it’s important to enjoy the process of making art. “I don’t want a legacy,” she explains. “I just want to have fun while I’m here.”

Sheila Hicks traveled around the world. She realized textiles are “a universal language.”

Hicks combines ideas from design, architecture, and art. She wraps, weaves, and piles materials like wool and linen. Hicks always begins with color when she makes artworks.

Hicks’s 2016-17 work above is called Escalade Beyond Chromatic Lands. The installation filled a former rope factory in Venice, Italy. The artist made colorful mounds of fibers. Then she wrapped each one in a net. They create a rainbow of piled forms.

Hicks thinks it’s important to enjoy making art. “I don’t want a legacy,” she says. “I just want to have fun while I’m here.”