Shoreline
Julia Lines Wilson
2025 Fall Residency
ABOUT THE PROJECT
This work uses weaving as a process to record palimpsest, or intersections of time and place. It is part of a larger investigation into the potential gap (and gap of potential) between the tidal and vegetative edges of Governors Island.
Julia describes her process:
“The vegetative edge was woven as an initial landscape analysis. I walked the 2.16 miles of the island’s shore, stopping every 10 paces to collect the closest weavable plant to the shoreline edge, focusing on the herbaceous and shrub layers. These layers slow stormwater runoff, buffer coastal erosion, break wind blowing off the water, and provide a matrix of habitats for small mammals and insects. By collecting and mapping the weavable vegetation around the island, I was able to measure the distances between the vegetative edge and the tidal edge.
As I walked the shoreline edge on the asphalt ring around the island, with the chainlink fence at my left elbow, I walked upon the invisible warp yarns of a loom. The collected plants became the horizontal weft, woven in order.
In weaving, the working edge, or “the fell” is a continual "now" as the weaver works, between the past rolled up as cloth and the future warp yarns to be woven. Woven shadowboxes act as the "fell line" of time, capturing material memory objects caught in the woven mesh of the present. They are an architectural edge and boundary object between the site's present and future states.”
Seeds from a variety of species were collected in a seed rolodex, recording the island’s plants in autumn. Taking seeds out of their natural cycles and geographies creates questions about our responsibilities to these seeds, our participation with their processes or our fight to control them. Seed collection locations were mapped by GIS, another way we overlay our human frameworks onto living ecologies.
At the end of the project, the woven vegetative shoreline was brought to a nearby beach and laid down at the shore’s edge at low tide. The incoming tidal waves slowly reclaimed the weaving, dispersing seeds along the sandy shore and floating the work out to sea.
Julia describes her process:
“The vegetative edge was woven as an initial landscape analysis. I walked the 2.16 miles of the island’s shore, stopping every 10 paces to collect the closest weavable plant to the shoreline edge, focusing on the herbaceous and shrub layers. These layers slow stormwater runoff, buffer coastal erosion, break wind blowing off the water, and provide a matrix of habitats for small mammals and insects. By collecting and mapping the weavable vegetation around the island, I was able to measure the distances between the vegetative edge and the tidal edge.
As I walked the shoreline edge on the asphalt ring around the island, with the chainlink fence at my left elbow, I walked upon the invisible warp yarns of a loom. The collected plants became the horizontal weft, woven in order.
In weaving, the working edge, or “the fell” is a continual "now" as the weaver works, between the past rolled up as cloth and the future warp yarns to be woven. Woven shadowboxes act as the "fell line" of time, capturing material memory objects caught in the woven mesh of the present. They are an architectural edge and boundary object between the site's present and future states.”
Seeds from a variety of species were collected in a seed rolodex, recording the island’s plants in autumn. Taking seeds out of their natural cycles and geographies creates questions about our responsibilities to these seeds, our participation with their processes or our fight to control them. Seed collection locations were mapped by GIS, another way we overlay our human frameworks onto living ecologies.
At the end of the project, the woven vegetative shoreline was brought to a nearby beach and laid down at the shore’s edge at low tide. The incoming tidal waves slowly reclaimed the weaving, dispersing seeds along the sandy shore and floating the work out to sea.
COLLABORATORS/SUPPORT
Many thanks to Beam Center, Earth Matter, GrowNYC, and the Governors Island Horticulture team
People
