Hannah Watson (b. 1991, Columbia, South Carolina) is a textile & mixed media artist whose work is driven by deep diving into the psychology of human development and connection to place, rhythm, color, and pattern. As her grandmothers were both textile artists and her parents jointly ran an architectural firm, her childhood was heavily influenced by cloth, architecture, and drawing. After earning her B.S. in cultural anthropology and costume design from the College of Charleston, she worked with a women’s weaving cooperative in the Sacred Valley, Peru in 2014 and then returned to South Carolina to work with an indigo grower & dyer. Hannah pursued natural dyeing, weaving, and collage education at Penland School of Craft and John C. Campbell Folk School in western North Carolina and completed a Professional Craft degree in Textiles at Haywood Community College in 2017. She currently lives and works in Portland, OR as a textile artist and instructor at WildCraft Studio School.

artist statement

Weaving is freedom from right and wrong. To resist loss of biodiversity, weft yarns become people, become plants, grow legs and begin to wander across the plane of the ordered crosswise yarns. Innately in us all lies an affinity to weave, to draw connection, sometimes snug and thick like the plushness of a rug, sometimes loose and gauzy like a summer shirt that lets sweat drops pass through to the moist air. The tactility of cloth never ceases to woo me. The richness and diversity in texture - that dedication to bring uniformity and fertility to disparate materials - to connect them into one textile brings meaning into life. Weaving, in its linearity of line, has become a place to find reprieve, an honoring of truth, a clarity of thought and emotion. This particular creation process has become a way to find rhythm through syncing my breath as I throw the shuttle back and forth, back and forth. The question becomes: what is the essence of the yarn? Will it get along with, maybe even flourish and dance with its adjacently placed yarns? I want to know that my textiles will live a full life, that they will tatter in the wind and fade in the sun, and then compost back into the soil when it’s time.

I'd love to hear from you !

I aim to work with other designers and creatives to foster a community of textile, art, & conscious fashion awareness. I invite you to contact me with any questions, collaboration ideas, or just to say hi

HannahNWatson@gmail.com

Thanks to the generous support from the SCAC, my home studio is now a fully equipped weaving space 🌝 delighted to have purchased this wolf pup from a woman graduating to a larger loom, while this one fits in my little Honda just right. Thank you to
Also up in my shop ! Some freshly sewn handwoven and hand dyed eye pillows filled with flax and dream herbs - herbs that stimulate vivid dreaming. I fall asleep with mine on my eyes each night and have to search for it in the covers the next morning
‘Mysteries of Renewal’ will be in the group of new pieces going up for sale tomorrow morning - Monday 3.14 - at 11am EST 🌿 Woven with hand dyed cotton, linen, wool, and a hint of sparkled black, the subtle and meandering color changes to
Falling asleep to the rain last night, three small green frogs appeared in my dream as part of an alive art project I was conducting - the frogs all scattered and escaped their designated spots, disappearing into small crevices around the room. It fe
Joining the group of new work in my online shop this Monday at 11am EST, I haven’t decided a name yet for this piece, part of the woven memories series, but it will be called something by Monday 🌬 taken from a bush plane ride over the glaciers
‘Alchemy’ is going up in my online shop on this Monday 3.14 at 11a EST 🪅 This piece, woven with hand dyed cotton, linen, wool, and mixed fiber, measures 11” x 11.” I woke up at my artist residency trying to reconcile with the
invitation to meditate in a night garden
she’s going up for sale soon on my shop page, if you’re interested in the meantime, dm me 🐸 I took this photo last April on the day we turned our family’s land on Edisto Island over to another couple. When I was 15, I went examinin
mysteries of renewal // accepting commissions between now and late May 🌱 send me a color or set of colors, a phrase that you want mirrored and expanded upon, and some dimensions and I will weave you an intuited response piece, dm me if interested, a
right + left brain = wholeness (at least aiming for that meep)
Penlandia impromptu gallery set up, two weeks of heavy experimentation, meaning making, storytelling, interconnectedness 🐸🌱🐸 finally got to play with mixing dream material with photography with weaving and it was very very satisfying !! Thank you
completely and utterly enchanted by this ikat warp @penlandtextiles // what stuck out to me most in my dictionary of symbols reference is that, in Mexican cosmology, yellow is the color of the mysteries of renewal, since fields turn yellow in spring
the hands know what to do when the mind steps aside
This year has had me in a cocoon, mostly, as I both turn inward and caretake for loved ones through cooking many meals and offering emotional support, but it is not without dedication to my art practice! What I’ve learned this year is that you
What constellates aliveness in the body ? What has been moving towards activity, away from slumber ?
never imagined being one of these people, a two-screened person (no the cursor doesn’t go back and forth between screens…not just yet) 👀
in a state of beingness, emptiness, taking in shadow and light, slowing down, remembering the mentorship program lots from this time last year, sample scraps and the buzz of learning new techniques, seeing new wovenscapes coming to life beat x beat
much needed psychic space, Kansas in July, complete with sunflowers and oil rigs
life is a drawing