This article is part of Hyperallergic‘s Pride Month Seriesfeaturing an interview with a different emerging or mid-career transgender or non-binary artist each weekday throughout June.

Illinois-based artist Poppy DeltaDawn teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she stresses to her fiber students that “weaving is a human right.” As a transgender woman, DeltaDawn highlights the “transitivity” inherent in the conversion of raw sheep’s fleece into woven fabric as well as the craft’s shift from a labor-intensive and dominated trade. by women to a largely automated process. The artist’s fiber work is produced from a myriad of inspirations: the subversive fabric samplers of the 19th century, the motivational posters of the New Deal era, the “non-automation” of weaving and an appreciation of the “fragmented bodies” (particularly that of sheep) that we dress ourselves in, to name a few. To drive the point home, DeltaDawn points out that the art of weaving is just as old as the existence of transgender people.

Hyperallergic: What is the current orientation of your artistic practice?

DeltaDawn Poppy: I have a lot of work in the planning process that I’m excited to start in the fall, but this summer I’m devoting a lot of my time and energy to a series of wool weaves done both on the loom Jacquard loom and hitched floor loom. I consider my weaves as samplers. Samplers, or samples, take many forms, including sample covers, sample books, or embroidery or repair samplers, such as with an alphabet or perhaps a short Bible verse. I like samplers because they can be useful tools for planning future projects, or learning and experimenting, but they are also objects that point the user towards the author or creator. I love that they bring the viewer back to the studio or the job site. They are also more vulnerable: a space where anything can happen.

People have been spinning and weaving cloth since we were human: Neanderthals spun thread 46,000 years ago. Many of my weaves start out as raw fleece in my studio, shaved off the back of the sheep with some grass, maybe a few bugs and anything that might have been caught before the shearer took it off and sent it to me . Then I clean it, card the wool, spin it, dye it and weave it into fabric before it ends up in the work. What interests me is how invisible the work of all of this is, the same way the work of the person who made the shirt I’m wearing is invisible. I’m interested in the power of handwoven fabric and the historical power of fabric. I think weaving fabric is an act of resistance, and that handwoven and manipulated jacquard is a subversion of its intended use: bringing fabric production closer to automation.

H: In what ways, if any, does your gender identity play a role in your experience as an artist?

PD: Spinning wool into yarn reinforces the closeness and connection I feel with the material. In the same way that a part of the sheep’s body is manipulated, spun and woven into fabric, I am able to change my own trans body. I feel such a bodily and spiritual connection to spinning and weaving fabric, being female and also being human and trans. I think a lot about my connection to the earth and how the earth is another body.

In the same way that I make samples, I make other examples of what I consider educational tools, which are videos analogous to instructional videos, much like what you’ll find on YouTube. My videos are made like my weaves: with materiality in mind, using lots of green screen technology, musical instruments and spinning wheels… My instructional videos also provide some context for my weaves. They also address my body materially, and I present it in the videos in an autobiographical way. A lot of my work is exploring and pushing vulnerability. I find the power to show varying degrees of my vulnerability through my work.

H: Which artists inspire your work today? What are your other sources of inspiration?

PD: I spent a lot of time looking at objects from antiquity, especially from Egypt and Sumer. I find research to be a necessary and rewarding part of my practice. Learning about the heritage of crafts and objects and how people have farmed the land sustainably and harvested objects from it is really at the heart of my work, so learning about things like the shepherd and bee beaks in wicker is so fascinating to me.

I love so many artists and have so many crushes, but I just went to the Sarah Sze and Gego exhibitions and can’t help but gush. Some of the big names who have inspired or influenced my work: Brian Bress, Ed Rossbach, Martin Puryear, Mary Reid and Patrick Kelley, Jeanine Oleson, Kristine Woods, Ellen Lesperance, Pipilotti Rist, Carol Rama and Charles LeDray

H: What are your hopes for the LGBTQIA+ community right now?

PD: I mean, right now, I really hope we can all be free. All bodies deserve to be liberated from the state.