My favorite thing to do is make or find connections between things that seem, at first glance, completely unrelated. What drives me is an optimistic conviction that we are all connected in some way or another. I try to tell myself, "Pam, you can always find something in common with someone." Physics shows us that infinite connections exist across living mediums such as human, animal, and plant (and for many of us, rocks fall into the recipe too!). Our world is infinitely connected.
The same holds true for art. The medium an artist chooses is only the beginning; underneath, artists working in entirely different materials are often asking the same questions. That is the territory I want to explore here, using the recent work of Sharon Havelka and Eva Langsdon as a starting point. This is not a review of their show. It is a small invitation to think about cross-pollination across mediums, and how getting curious about a discipline outside your own can strengthen the work you already do. I'm trying to keep these readings short, curious, and digestible, so I have written this as more of a consideration for students than a deep dive. Bear with me for four short paragraphs. If you can walk away from this reading curious about how studying a different medium can benefit your preferred practice, I will count that as a win.
If you were able to see the work of Sharon Havelka and Eva Langsdon before the show came down, you might have thought you'd entered two unrelated worlds. Downstairs, Havelka presented stitched sculptures: multi-colored, swelling fabric forms made with trapunto and embroidery, filled from behind and sometimes resealed, sometimes left wide open, even gaping. Upstairs, Langsdon showed her process of carefully planned geometric, jewel-toned compositions on shaped supports of wood and metal. They are flat, cool, architectural, and layered by the intentional building-up of paint. One artist works with thread; the other with paint. One pushes form outward through stuffing; the other suggests dimension through layered color.
I began my research looking for an artist who shared at least one quality with each of them. Both Havelka and Langsdon work with bounded forms that refuse to stay flat. Both are slow, hand-built, and deeply considered. Havelka draws her line with a needle and then pushes that line outward by stuffing the form. Langsdon draws her forms with paint, blending layers so masterfully that the illusion of dimension seems to rise from inside the surface itself. Eventually I happened upon the work of Dianna Molzan. I had not seen her work before, and I had to work through a brain tangle trying to figure out whether I was looking at a painting of threads or threads from a painting. This is where research enters your art practice. It helps you understand what you are seeing.
Molzan is an American contemporary painter based in Los Angeles. Her process involves unweaving canvas to expose the stretcher beneath. She will sometimes stuff sections of her work, letting "textile thinking" restructure what painting can be. She is not a textile artist who decided to paint, or a painter who borrowed cloth as decoration. She is a painter whose work became more itself by listening to what a different discipline could teach her own.
This is the lesson I want to leave with exploratory, curious artists. Cross-pollination doesn't dilute your medium; it deepens it. You don't have to abandon painting to learn from textile, or leave fiber to learn from painting. You only have to be curious about the practice next door. Notice what your medium shares with theirs. Bring questions back, not techniques. Let the borrowed question reshape your own work.
Havelka, Langsdon, and Molzan all confirm what I've always suspected. Nothing is as separate as it looks. Form, material, discipline, even species are infinitely connected. The artist's job is to keep showing us just how much.