FRINGE THEORY

As I’ve been exploring patchwork quilting in my studio practice, fringes are something I encounter often. They are unruly, the beginning stage of the unraveling of order and unity. When we talk about societal dysfunction, we often seek the cause of what’s “tearing apart the fabric” of our lives. Fringes are the borderland of woven material, marginal by definition. (There’s a reason it’s called the “outskirts”) In a hierarchy of material, the center of fabric is characterized by order, unity, and strength. Fringes exist on the margin, viewed as a threat to the center, are traditionally hidden, contained, suppressed, controlled. Fringes are the edge of the known, they are where order starts to break down, but by being an edge, they also represent the possibility of connecting to something beyond the known.