2024/25 MCAD–Jerome Fellow Interview: Amy Usdin

Yi Wang
Your work explores the intersections of past and present through worn nets. What first drew you to these materials, and how did they become central to your practice?

Amy Usdin
When I started my practice, I didn’t have any formal equipment but discovered I could weave onto the ropes of a nearly-forgotten horse fly net I’d randomly purchased decades earlier. I found I could trace a surprising number of formative moments and associations to sporadic childhood trail rides. I remember experiencing specific states while riding a horse—joy and empowerment, but also fear, trepidation, anxiety, and shame. As social creatures, horses experience similar human-type feelings; their frayed nets, with the intimacy of worn hand-me-downs, hold that emotion, drawing out my stories.

At the time, I’d been caring for elderly parents in messy decline; in that, I felt a parallel to the gentle but imperfect tending of worn objects that had become obsolete. As I continue this work through a personal lens, I consider my own changing relevance.

During the isolation of the pandemic, I began weaving on fishing nets as well. Reminiscent of those made and mended for thousands of years, fishing nets provide metaphor for themes that connect us to our histories and to each other, something I clung to in a moment that forced a complicated relationship to the passage of time.

YW Your process of slowly weaving within and across the nets’ fixed borders feels deeply meditative. How does this act of repair and reconstruction influence your own relationship with memory and loss?

AU The process allows me space to reconcile and reclaim layers of my own history. Weaving fills a need to document scars aesthetically, not just for the undignified end through which I shepherded my parents but for past experiences and traumas that have clarified themselves through the act of weaving. More than armature, the nets act as conduits of memory and with that comes the sometimes painful disconnect between wistful nostalgia and objective reality.

YW Picnic at Dead Horse Bay brings together environmental and human histories through found objects. How did visiting this specific site inspire and shape your approach to the piece?

AU Dead Horse Bay in Brooklyn, NY, is the site of a poorly capped midcentury landfill that continually blankets the beach with remnants of neighborhoods torn apart by eminent domain—everything from plastic toys, china shards, architectural bits, and shoe leather to ubiquitous glass bottles and occasional bones from the long-shuttered horse rendering plants on the island nearby.

I visited maybe 10 years ago, thinking I’d collect artifacts as many people did back then before its closure due to radioactive contamination. Instead, I found walking over fragments of disrupted lives eerily profound—my father’s parents were immigrants in New York and it was by grace of a zip code that their community remained intact.

Dead Horse provides a cautionary tale that the past resurfaces, sometimes unexpectedly, often consequentially. Like the bay, without the backstory, this piece doesn’t outwardly reveal its narrative, speaking to the tendency to gloss over histories.

YW Your Passages series searches for human forms within the built landscape. What led you to this project, and what do you hope viewers take away from it?

AU I’ve spent the past year exploring alternate modes of construction to create companion work for my net sculptures. The Passages series is handwoven on a digital TC2 loom. When I had my first residency on the TC2, I was simply trying to understand its mechanics and figure out whether I had an appropriate visual language for that loom to make sense for me. Later, when walking through an area under renovation at the MSP airport, I was moved by what I saw as anthropomorphic imagery embedded in a concrete subfloor that had been stripped of carpeting. Passages is based on photos of those forms. At the time I was prepping for a show on revolving histories and was intrigued that airports, with tides of people washing through, offered a complementary point of shared humanity to my work with nets. As with my sculptures, I hope people can locate themselves within the work by making their own associations.

YW You use a TC2 digital loom to create woven pieces—how has working with digital weaving shifted your approach to making?

AU The different ways of making feed off each other. Outside of academic settings, access to the TC2 is a rarity so I can’t rely on it as a consistent part of my practice. Rather, I hope to collect relevant ideas and imagery as I work through my other pieces so that when I’m lucky enough to get time on a TC2, I’ll be able to produce pieces that add layers of meaning to my existing sculptures while informing new ones.

YW What is the most challenging part of your practice?

AU Trusting the process over hundreds of hours and minute motions is a constant challenge. Worn nets—especially fly nets with their imperfect and loosely spaced, segmented ropes—make an unlikely base for weaving, forcing constant renegotiation as I coax their floppy grids into three-dimensional shape. Due to their fixed nature, one finished section often precludes the way I’ve envisioned the next, forcing me to constantly pivot to accommodate the ever-narrowing options as the work moves toward its final form.

YW How has the MCAD-Jerome fellowship impacted your practice?

AU The financial support is allowing for greater risk in material exploration and greater opportunity, including another residency on the TC2. I tend to hole up in my studio, so it’s been amazing and instructive to connect with a cohort of artists with varied practices and perspectives. Keisha and Melanie are so invested in our experience that their facilitation of the fellowship feels like a warm and welcome mentorship.

YW If you could describe your work in one word, what would it be?

AU Empathetic