Augustina Woodgate

While perus­ing Lost At E Minor, I came across the work of Agusti­na Woodgate. More specif­i­cal­ly, I found her rugs, which are hand design and sewn from recy­cled stuffed ani­mal skins. 

I have always been intrigued by ori­en­tal rugs, and the intri­cate tech­niques used to con­struct them. Via her web­site, there is expla­na­tion to her project:

The rugs not only ref­er­ence the per­son­al his­to­ries of the toy’s own­ers, but inves­ti­gate the rug as an object orga­niz­ing and dis­play­ing mem­o­ries and lin­eages. In East­ern Cul­tures, the ori­en­tal rug cen­tral­izes the liv­ing space in pat­tern, oper­at­ing beyond util­i­ty to depict the spir­i­tu­al and men­tal world in woven form. Woodgate is par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to the spe­cif­ic mean­ings in the arrange­ment of rug designs, and how dif­fer­ent his­to­ries of the rug rep­re­sent sto­ries of the past and ways of trac­ing arche­types in phys­i­cal and mate­r­i­al forms. 

Augusti­na’s use of old toys adds anoth­er lev­el to the act of rug con­struc­tion. She is tak­ing dis­card­ed items, ones with his­to­ry, and cre­at­ing a whole oth­er chap­ter in the life of these old toys. It’s also mak­ing some­thing that could be sil­ly (like a stuffed bear) and sud­den­ly turn­ing it into some­thing that is very util­i­tar­i­an, and ton­ing down the play­ful nature of what it once was. 

All images from her web­site.