textile earth artist
Moira Bateman creates assemblages from waxed silk, stained with waterway sediments of Minnesota’s rivers, lakes and bogs.
Artist Profile
Initially inspired by the ancient Scandinavian practice of leaving wool to dye black in bogs, my work has centered around leaving silk to soak for weeks, months, or years in rivers, lakes, and bogs of Minnesota. These places make stains, marks and deteriorations with the natural pigments of earth, plants, and water on silk over time. I have left silk in dozens of locations throughout Minnesota for various amounts of time, studying the liminal plant communities around these waterways, and the microscopic life in the water itself. I have seen larger, more polluted waterways significantly deteriorate and erode the silk and recently, my experimentations have been productive exploring the metallic minerals present in mud, peat, and lake bottom sediments. My motivation for dedicating a great deal of time to this work is to give these beautiful, biodiverse and endangered landscapes voice. I believe that the cloth becomes imbued with the life of these places, and holds its memory in its fibers, revealing their stories.
Bog Etudes: Moira Bateman at Form+Content Gallery 2023, video by Liam Porter
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Bog Etudes
Form + Content Gallery, Minneapolis MN
Installation of cut silk, dyed with bog mud and layered with wax
2023
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Etudes: Watersheds, Bogs, Kayaks
The 2022 McKnight Fiber Fellowship Exhibition
Textile Center Minneapolis
2023
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You Me: For my mother
Grand Marais Art Colony, Grand Marais Minnesota
Silk left in Prune Lake, Gunflint Trail August 2019-August 2020. Exhibition May 2021.
2019-2021
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By Way of Water
Bowery Gallery, New York City
Large scale abstractions of Minnesota Lake micro-organisms, waterway stained silk waxed assemblages.
2019
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Hand of The River
Silk left submerged Mississippi River near Winona MN
Peace silk, mud stain, sediment, wax
Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona MN 2016
McKnight Foundation Lobby Gallery, Minneapolis MN 2016-2017
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The Hungry Girls
A series of 9 giantess forms made of raw Navajo Churro sheep fleeces Nuno felted into onion skin dyed linen and hung from animal yokes. Based on the story by Patricia Eakins “The Hungry Girls”.
2011-2015
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Field to Table
Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Chanhassen MN
A year-long installation highlighting rows of vegetable plants growing out of a harvest table with spring, summer and fall crops.
2010
Robyne Robinson, Fiber Art Now
“Bateman’s work is a study of metamorphoses. An environmentalist and student of famed sculptor Kinji Akagawa, she adopted the principle that all art is the product of gathering and creating ideas for the public to consume and reinterpret. Bateman applied this theory to the source of her artwork—the boggy mud and how the minerals in it enrich and transform pigments within the cloth.”
Alicia Eler, Star Tribune
“Bateman's work comes across as a collaboration with that which already exists. The result is objects as fragile as Earth itself.”
Tracy Krumm, McKnight Fiber Fellowship Director at Textile Center, Minneapolis
“Bateman’s unwavering dedication to a practice focused on sustainability, whether it be her work in landscape architecture or eco-conscious art and place making that has been the foundation of her work all year, and the fellowship gift has supported her pursuit of new directions in the studio.”
Press/News
