FROG – A Fiber Situation
FROG is a large-scale fiber sculpture centered on the concept of “frogging”—the practice of unraveling knitted work in order to begin again. The figure depicts a frog actively knitting a future iteration of itself, staging a cycle of making, undoing, and persistence. Executed entirely in fiber at monumental scale, the work frames repetition, failure, and revision not as loss, but as generative acts embedded in both craft and lived experience, requiring discernment and, at times, the willingness to undo what has already been made.
The sculpture was developed through an intensive pattern-writing process, with dozens of hand-written patterns created to resolve posture, proportion, and structural integrity—often requiring the knitted work itself to be unraveled and begun again. The figure includes articulated joints, and the eyes are formed directly as part of the head rather than attached as separate elements, eliminating seams and maintaining continuity of the knitted surface. Standard yarn was first knitted into thick rope, then re-knitted using oversized needles to construct the form. The frog and the chair it occupies each weigh approximately 300 pounds.
The figure sits atop a full-scale knitted replica of Gerrit Rietveld’s Red and Blue Chair, constructed in collaboration with Ken Chapin, who scaled and built the internal wooden armature of the chair. A custom-fitted fiber skin completes the structure, with the sculpture’s palette drawn from the chair’s primary color scheme.
FROG – A Fiber Situation premiered at VFW Post 1 in Denver’s Santa Fe Arts District in August 2022 and was later presented as the centerpiece of the Grand Opening of Space to Create in Trinidad, Colorado, where it remained on view for over a year. The work is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming contemporary fiber exhibition at the PACE Center in Parker, Colorado, alongside related projects. Conceived nearly a decade before its realization, FROG represents a sustained inquiry into endurance, authorship, and the physical and emotional labor required to begin again.