Maggie Dimmick is an artist, designer, Earth-advocate, long-distance hiker, auntie, and dreamer.
In her words….
My art-making practice is an exploration of intuition, a study of color interactions, and a conversation with the natural world – all with a commitment to using rescued materials diverted from waste streams. My work is rooted in traditional textile techniques, yet is oriented towards new methods and connections that emerge through iterations of slow manual processes. I seek to deepen connections to the natural world around us and the nature that is innately inside of us.
In the last four years, I’ve been studying the process of assigning meaning to objects and materials and how they can transform from mundane, to meaningful, to sacred. I’m fascinated by how humans imbue collective or personal meaning onto objects and materials, and how that can in turn cause a transformation within us. I am exploring how we use objects in ceremony, rituals, and mourning practices within and beyond historical and religious contexts. As someone without a religion and having been severed from my ancestors’ place of indigeneity and spirituality, what will connect me to my lineage? What are the objects that can capture or hold the sense of sacredness I naturally sense around me? My art-making is a quest to answer this question and more. I’ve been using visual and symbolic aspects of the circle, roundedness, radiating or undulating lines, and interconnecting parts as elements with which to explore this.
More recently, my hands have been knotting fabric strips into three-dimensional shapes in combination with basket weaving and over-dyeing/painting. While on an ancestral quest in Scotland in 2024, I discovered Victorian mourning cards and funeral notice envelopes outlined in thick black lines printed at a printing press. These beautifully striking envelopes influenced a series of work exploring the use of a black ink line as a notice of a death and subsequent grieving as seen in “Mourning Vessel.” It represents an attempt to hold one’s grief, yet grief cannot be contained.
My current art practice continues to combine ancient basketry techniques with rescued fabrics in a modern sensibility. I’ve been expanding upon “Wind Upreaching,” with its pale blues and amorphous basketry shapes, with a goal of creating a whole menagerie of creature-like blue forms that look to be morphing and transforming, or even swaying in the wind.
A bit of background:
Currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Maggie worked in the New York fashion industry for brands including Eileen Fisher, where she designed and developed sustainable textiles, along with Elie Tahari, Donna Karan, and Tracy Reese. She studied apparel design at Cornell University and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as well as environmental sustainability at Columbia University. She was the owner of Ethel Studio, a zero-waste textile studio, which closed in 2023. She is also currently the director of marketing for Garage Grown Gear.
Artist photo by Drew Arrieta