Following our little road trip to Southern California, I’m happy to be back foraging for you!  We’re newly installed in Joshua Tree, California until at least mid-January.  Our little artsy rental is only a few blocks from the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.  We can actually see it in the distance from our back porch!  This place has a special kind of energy– there is a connectedness you feel here.. to the earth, to the sky, to your fellow humans.  The work of Northern California artist Sonya Philip brings to mind the way in which we link ourselves with our surroundings and each other.

Philip chooses to weave into every day objects, things we might otherwise cast aside or not even look twice at.  In doing so, she reminds us of our own disposability and habit of consumption.  A design woven into a fallen leaf ( above ) might symbolize the leaf’s eventual decay, while threads woven through discarded and gessoed postcards ( below ) or a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream carton speak to the beauty that can be found in what otherwise might be considered trash.

The delicacy of her weaving juxtaposes against the crassness of commercial packaging and metallic rusticity of a bicycle wheel to reveal a symbiosis of the organic and the industrial.

To see more of Sonya Philip’s work, please visit her website.

Artist found via Art & Sustainability on Facebook.  All images are via the artist’s website.