Kendall Ross with her work in the Penland textiles studio.
Penland Winter Resident Kendall Ross‘s art sweaters have won the hearts of curators, art-lovers, and the internet. Known for her bright colors, mind-bending color work, and confessional style, Kendall makes her creative home in her native Oklahoma City where she is a full time studio artist. At Penland, we were charmed by the quickness and ease with which Kendall seems to bring her work into being . We were also honored to host Kendall for her first artist residency. “I was so inspired by the talent of the other artists I was working around and the support of the Penland staff,” she said. “I feel like I’ve formed so many new and important connections in my life with new friends and artists.”
Kendall completed quite a bit of work while here at Penland. One finished piece was a two-headed sweater about her relationship to her creative practice that she encouraged us to try on at show and tell.
We took the opportunity to interview Kendall about her two-headed sweater. Please enjoy!
Kendall uses “StitchFiddle” to plan out her designs
INTERVIEW WITH KENDALL ROSS
What inspired the two-headed sweater?
Right now, I am inspired by the idea of making pieces about the relationship I have with my work and artistic process. When I’m writing text though, I love to use language that could be taken in so many different ways based on who is reading it. So for me, the two-headed sweater is about my relationship with people’s perception of my work, but someone else could think it’s about a bad relationship.
I wanted to put two different sweaters into one piece because the way I feel about the creative process is essentially two sides of the same coin. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years trying so hard to be taken seriously or be seen as a real artist, but at the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks because the work and the process of creating is ultimately mine. For me, though, there is no way to get rid of the fear of how people will see you and what you do, so even when you focus on the process for yourself you’re still carrying the fear and the baggage of perception and expectation with you.
Also- truthfully, I just thought it would be so funny to make a two-headed sweater and I wanted to see if I could do it successfully, haha. I loved watching people try it on at Show and Tell.
Trying on the two-headed sweater at show and tell
For us craft nerds: How did you make it?
I hand-knit each piece using a combination of intarsia and stranded (fair-isle) colorwork. I spend a lot of time charting out and designing each piece using software called “StitchFiddle,” which is essentially digital graph paper where I can notate where I need to change colors when I’m knitting.
I knit this piece in six pieces. I started by knitting the front left, front right, back left, and back right panels. I seamed all of those together and knit both sleeves in the round. The last thing I did was pick up and knit stitches around the neckline to make the folded collars and wove in all the ends.
How long did it take you to knit the two-headed sweater?
I started this piece on the first Saturday of the residency. At that point, I was working to knit up the back panel of the big vest I made, which is mostly one color. I can’t work on something simple for too long before I get antsy, so I designed the chart and started knitting the black and white half of it before I finished the vest.
Most of the piece was made during the second week of the residency after I finished the vest. I was determined to complete the two-headed sweater because I wanted to have a piece that was made entirely during my time at the residency. I was working on finishing the second sleeve the morning of the last day so it would be ready for people to try on at Show and Tell.
What was your two-week Penland Winter Residency like?
I could probably talk about this for hours, but it was literally incredible. I don’t have an art school background, and I had never done a residency before so I had no expectations of what the Penland Winter Residency would look like. I was so inspired by the talent of the other artists I was working around and the support of the Penland staff. I feel like I’ve formed so many new and important connections in my life with new friends and artists.
I am in a unique situation compared to other artists because knitting is so portable, so it’s not like I needed to do a residency to have access to specific facilities like a kiln. However, the time and space to focus on my work outside of my day-to-day environment was so impactful and pushed me to create work that is different than what I normally create. I could say so many good things about my time at Penland, and I’m excited to return someday!
Is knitting your full-time job? What’s next?
Yes! I knit full-time! I have a lot of exciting things lined up for this year, including a solo show at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum that opens in August.
During my time at Penland, I started thinking about ways I could shift my practice to create work that is bigger and less wearable than what I usually create. I’m excited to make new exciting and weird things in the future!
The hardest thing about not holding workshops this summer is knowing that so many of you are missing out on the incredible interactions and relationships and skill building that time at Penland fosters. We believe there’s no substitute for this intense, in-person learning. But we also know that, wherever they are, our instructors are a generous group with a lot to teach and share. So, in that spirit, we’re checking in with a handful of them who would have been here teaching at the start of our summer sessions. We hope their words, images, and short videos light a creative spark in you—may you nourish it until the next time we can be together in the studios again! #PenlandEverywhere
I miss being part of the creative community at Penland this year. Since the pandemic I have been printing, making short videos and bending branches around the corners of my studio. There is something about a stick at 90-degree angle that feels so wrong and unnatural that somehow feels right. Some days I am completely focused in the studio and know where I am headed. On other days I am restless, totally lost and wander from one project to the next.
Sometimes being stuck, however frustrating, is a good thing. I have been reflective about my work, humanity and how we are all connected. My agitation has kept me moving and I have gotten back in touch with what really drives my creative practice. Exploring new materials with no particular outcome in mind is one of those places. With exhibitions postponed and projects cancelled having time to play has been a gift.
Wishing everyone good health and abundant creativity.
Right now I’m working on a series of three large-scale collages made from cloth I wove and dyed by hand. These works combine the slow, methodical and thoroughly planned process of weaving, which I use to create raw material for collage with the spontaneous and playful puzzle-like creation of the final piece. Because the handwoven cloth is so dense it has a real weight and presence as a material, and putting the cut pieces together truly feels like building or sculpting.
When I started this series (still working on the title), I had a few things in mind that have been guiding the work: landscape, mountains, language, atmosphere, air, ice and water, chaos and order. I began this work a few months before quarantine, with seven huge panels of handwoven cloth in whites and creams of seven different materials (cotton warp woven with: linen, alpaca, bleached cotton, natural cotton, mohair, silk, and merino), which I overdyed in seven colors. Those cloths were then divided for the three large collages: the one you see on the wall is the largest and only vertical of the three, the other two are landscape orientation. The second one is finished and partially rolled up on the table, and I’m about to start on the third from the remaining pieces!
This is an image of my work space at Sawyer Street Studios in South Portland ME, a ceramics facility I purchased and renovated with three other women artists in 1988. We’re still going strong after all these years! The work you see here is from my most recent firing. All of my pieces are slab constructed with glazes and slips applied in layers, fired to 04 in oxidation. My reference is to various kinds of structures, some as small as letters of the alphabet, others large scale architectural and industrial forms. The idea is to refer rather than replicate. Tarpaper is an integral part of my idea generation and working process, used as maquette, template and mold. The patterns you see in the back left help me to envision 3-D form. A visit to my website will show you closer images of pieces, most of which are primarily clay, but some incorporate other materials.
In German usage, a metal designer is also called an artist blacksmith—that means blacksmith and art, or craft and design, or hand and head, or art and skill.
As an artisan, it is very important to me personally that I first make sure that I have the techniques to realize my ideas with my hands. So, on the drawing board, I already have certain steps of realization in mind. However, this is not always possible, especially if the idea is completely new. I first try to create the idea in a different, softer material and then use a metal model to get closer to the original. Many of my works were created as models before I made the original in the workshop.
I would have liked to follow this approach in my workshop at Penland: Get to know techniques and then create an idea from head to hand.
In an alternate reality, right now I would be immersed in the intensity of studio practice, the richness of relationships, and the abundance of fantastic food that is Penland. I would be teaching Say It Softly, a workshop driven by my own studio work of the last three years. We would be translating words into physical textile forms with processes like appliqué, reverse appliqué, piecing, embroidery, and embellishment (with loads of sequins). Instead, I am making masks and preparing to teach weaving at Appalachian State University as it was never intended: online.
I can only mentally justify my creative practice right now if it in some way gives something to others. Part of that drive has resulted in masks to give away (though certainly not at the same mass scale as so many artists right now), but a larger part has been modeling for my weaving students that the woven world is bigger than looms.
When my students at Appalachian State University left for spring break, their first major projects were almost finished on their looms. They had just started learning the language of weaving in January, and were ready to start speaking in visual sentences when their progress was halted. I promised to show them that weaving can happen anywhere and with anything, and so—in the last two months of the semester—I wove patterns (both complex and simple) throughout my home, using the obvious choices of fabric and yarn, but also things like tights, exercise equipment, spaghetti, and toilet paper in temporary installations. This practice was incredibly cathartic for me. It challenged that side of my brain that craves problem-solving and physical making, while providing what feels like meaningful examples to my students.
Now, I am preparing for the next iteration of weaving instruction, this time 100% online in a condensed five-week summer session. After teaching weaving on treadle looms for years, I am rethinking the entire woven world, and—for the first time—preparing instructional videos for my students. I am also considering how to respond to the incredible limitations of teaching and learning in this format: there is no direct physical interaction, there is no studio community, there is no yarn inventory. I am certain that the class will not be perfect, but I am also certain that my thinking and teaching about weaving will be forever changed.
My studio is a hot mess right now, with half-finished projects scattered everywhere and finished work layered on the walls, as daily reminders of canceled exhibitions. Fabric from my extensive stash is washed, ironed, cut, and/or sewn as it makes the slow transformation into masks. Yarn—from the scrap bin of the ASU fibers studio—blocks my path through the room as I obsessively, painstakingly disentangle and organize it to send off to my summer weaving students. I have no idea when “normal” will return, nor what my “real” studio work will look like when it does. For now, though, I am content to make a tiny contribution toward simply surviving this time, and am grateful to have the space and resources to do so.
Music and chocolate keep spirits uplifted.
Muse and stupidity approach in the wee hours.
All the cards are held in my hand.
Playing with the game helps to shape the quality of my life.
Born and raised in Japan and now resident in the U.S., I am fascinated by the universality of human nature, on the one hand, and its unique individuality, on the other. My work inevitably reflects on my own personality, experiences, feelings, and beliefs. The discipline of Japanese ethics, aesthetics, and culture was embedded in me before I recognized it. Drawing on these cultural roots, my technical training, and decades of making, I seek to bridge the structure of the traditional craft and the freedom of contemporary art and design.
Whether I am channeling my inner chaos into an abstract sculptural form or a functional decorative object, the challenge is how to embed poetic qualities in work. Fabricating in wood with my own two hands is as essential to me as breathing. It is how I think, how I shape my life, how I relate to the world. In the hope of sharing compassion, encouragement, and inspiration, I play my hand as best I can.
Recently my studio practice has slowed down as I ramped up watching my two kids full time. Catching a few hours each day has changed the way I have approached my creative time. Reading more poetry, working on pots for the garden, visiting ideas that have been on the back burner, and enjoying my kitchen pots even more. Unlike a lot of my colleagues, I am finding that because of the kids, I am away from the computer way more than usual. This means my emails take a little longer to get responded to and I am not synced into all the zoom possibilities, but I am engaging in my home space in a way that I have not since we moved here 5 years ago. Anyways, all this to say- I miss you and look forward to face to face connections soon. Be well. Lindsay
It’s so easy to assume that life will continue as we imagine it will. Maybe the challenge of our changing lives is to become more comfortable with the unknown. After a bit of a roller coaster ride, I feel my equilibrium and buoyancy returning. I seek solace in my studio, and feel so fortunate to have this life of clay already established, and a safe place to explore and imagine. Seeking beauty and working with color is especially uplifting. Daily rambles outside have led me to explore some of the old cemeteries in the area. I find the strolls peaceful, cementing relationships between the past, the present and the future. The two jars fronting this image are the first in a series responding to the grace and simplicity of grave monuments. The new memory I’m adopting is that this space between us all can hold humor, delight, surprise, new solutions, and thinking before action or words.
Every winter, we begin the new year with a month of short, intense residencies at Penland. Winter Residency is a time when we invite artists to arrive with their own ideas and projects and bring them to life in our studios. There is no instruction and we don’t give assignments—we just ask that each resident dive in, explore, and connect with the energy and creativity of this community. It’s the best start to the year we could hope for.
Below, we highlight a few photographs and themes from this year’s residency. Find out more (and learn how to apply to join us next year!) on the Winter Residency page.
Creation
Winter residency is a time to create. It’s a time to actually work on those ideas that just won’t keep quite and see what’s really there when you give them a chance. Here, metals resident Mary Raivel is continuing a series of pieces that incorporate old lenses and watch crystals. She says, “I would never have managed to devote the necessary time to this new work on age and ageism using new (to me) materials, were it not for my time here.”
Concentration
No meal schedules, no work-study schedules, no class projects, no daily slide talks. There is less structure to Penland’s Winter Residencies than there is to our workshop sessions, which means you can work how and when it works for you. It’s amazing how much our residents accomplish in just a couple weeks of deep concentration! Here, potter Ronen Yamin focuses while trimming a series of vessels.
Collection
With half as many people but just as much space, winters at Penland provide a quieter, more expansive atmosphere than the all-in exuberance of our summer workshops. Here, painting and drawing resident Katie St. Clair spreads out during the first two weeks of residency to put the finishing touches on a collection of paintings for an upcoming exhibition. Winter residency is the perfect time to take a step back from individual pieces and think about your work as a whole.
Challenge
Mostly, it’s personal challenges that our winter residents set for themselves, but there are always a few fun group challenges, too. The annual Table in a Day competition is one we’ve written about repeatedly on the Penland blog (2020, 2018, 2017). This year, residents introduced a new one: Spoon Before Noon. Above are just some of the results from the morning in a variety of materials and even more styles!
Collaboration
When you get 80+ artists together in an open studio environment, there’s bound to be a lot of discussion, sharing, and building on each other’s ideas. Often, these interactions lead to new collaborations, such as this one between textiles residents Sasha Baskin and Alyssa Salomon. Together, they used Alyssa’s screenprinting knowledge to turn Sasha’s lace designs into prints on fabric.
Celebration
To end it all, we ask everyone to participate in one of our oldest, most cherished traditions: Show and Tell. It’s a time to explore what everyone else has been up to while you’ve been head down in the studio, to catch up with old friends and say hi to new ones, and mostly to marvel at the sheer creative force that is the Penland community. Winter residents, you amaze us! Thank you for giving this month your all and sharing it so generously with us.
Kendall Ross with her work in the Penland textiles studio.
Kendall uses “StitchFiddle” to plan out her designs
Trying on the two-headed sweater at show and tell
