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By Sarah Currier on April 2, 2024

Each of these stunning macramé wall hangings brings a touch of the outdoors inside.

Textile artist Rianne Aarts of art studio Teddy and Wool specializes in crafting woven wall hangings. Using only natural materials in her work, such as hand-spun wool, cotton cords, and non-toxic dyes and pigments, Aarts creates gorgeous pieces of textile art. From depictions of rolling hills to glowing suns, much of her work is clearly inspired by the peace and beauty of nature.

“Ever since I was young I always felt the need to create things of beauty,” the artist admits. “That need slowly turned into passion and that passion is what drives me to create art.”

Aarts, who is based in the Netherlands, started Teddy and Wool in 2016, creating small macramé wall hangings and plant hangers that she would sell on Etsy to help support herself as she worked towards her law degree. Since then, the business has grown significantly. She now owns a small art studio and leads a team of three creative women, who also work on wall hangings. Over the years, she and her team have created over 6,000 wall hangings and have been commissioned by a wide variety of interior designers from big name brands such as Google, Starbucks, and several major hotel chains. Most notably, one of her wall hangings was featured in the blockbuster film Sonic 2.

Her next collection is titled REFRAMED and will feature a total of nine fiber wall hangings. The name is inspired by Aart’s 2022 collection, FRAMED, which utilized carefully dyed and placed strings to create beautiful gradient and geometric patterns surrounded by wooden frames.[…]

More: Macramé Wall Hangings Mimic Colorful Gradients Found in Nature

MARCH 29, 2024 GRACE EBERT

“Yakemein.” All images © Akea Brionne

Working on digital jacquard weavings, Akea Brionne adds rhinestones, infusing a sense of decadence into each tapestry.

Woven into Akea Brionne’s glimmery Afro-surrealist tapestries is an impulse toward sustainability. With a degree in the subject and a practice rooted in research, the Detroit-based artist began considering how to minimize waste while developing photographs. Curbing consumption became a grounding principle that goes beyond material excess, extending to “ideas, conceptions, thoughts, and ways of being,” she tells Colossal.

Working on digital jacquard weavings, Brionne stitches rhinestones to garments, tiled floors, and other details, adding an element of decadence to each tapestry. Many of the portraits shown here were on view recently at Lyles & King in New York for Brionne’s solo show, Roses Grow in Southern Soil, and investigate “her grandfather’s journey between Mississippi and New Mexico in the 1970s at the tail end of The Great Migration.” She is interested in the lingering effects of colonialism and the African Diaspora, particularly as it relates to memory and how stories are passed from one generation to the next.

Detail of “Yakemein”

Whether focused on a single anonymous subject or a small group in front of expansive bodies of water, the works are infused with an eerie sense of the uncanny, subtly unsettling the familiar. “I also think about excess in terms of seeing a large amount of representations of Blackness that felt restrictive, so I strive to combat that and provide some diversity,” the artist adds. […]

Left: “Look Away From It.” Right: “Look Towards It”

Source: Akea Brionne’s Uncanny Rhinestone Tapestries Unsettle Memory and the Familiar — Colossal