Janis Ledwell-Hunt

About

Artist Statement

I bring things back to life. Most often, I resuscitate anatomies by finding imaginative spaces within the confines of illness and decay. To do this, I adopt materials that have been used for industrial-grade destruction. 

Each of my textile sculptures is composed of tiny knots: a method for examining tension while materially employing it. I frequently return to the same subject matter, even when pieces fall years apart. My revisitation of subjects stems from a commitment to slow, steady organic processes of transformation. Traversing more ground is not as ethical a premise to me as watching the same ground change over time.

Material Choices

The majority of fibre I work with has, at one time, been an agent of ecological destruction. In 2024, I was granted 1500 lbs of rescued marine debris from Ocean Legacy, a non-profit organization tasked with coastal cleanup across British Columbia, Canada.

Discarded by fish farm operations and left as solid-form petrollium oil spills that destroy oceans, this industrial detritus material will never decompose. So I break it down myself. I separate, cut, melt, splice, and knot around kgs of this ocean debris rope with each new sculpture I create.

By harnessing the power of waste, I find twisted beauty in our current geological epoch (The Anthropocene). 

Bio

Canadian fibre artist, Janis Ledwell-Hunt’s knotted sculptures redefine macrame as a figurative contemporary art form. By pushing macrame to its expressive limits, Ledwell-Hunt interrogates distinctions between art and craft. To her visual art practice, Dr. Ledwell-Hunt brings her PhD in the Arts and Humanities (with a focus on modernist literature, post-humanist philosophy, and feminist theory). 

Currently working on the unceded traditional territory of the K’omoks first nation, Ledwell-Hunt resides with partner, Loren Wilson, a skilled welder and machinist, who acts as metal fabricator at pivotal moments in each sculpture. Ledwell-Hunt’s first cohesive body of work has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries. She’s currently hard at work on her second body of work, made in its entirety from marine debris.