One of the first trips I took when I started Design*Sponge was to Savannah, Georgia. I spoke at SCAD during their annual design week and was invited by their Fibers department to visit, learn, and explore. It remains one of the most formative weekends of my life and it was where I discovered both my […]

One of the first trips I took when I started Design*Sponge was to Savannah, Georgia. I spoke at SCAD during their annual design week and was invited by their Fibers department to visit, learn, and explore. It remains one of the most formative weekends of my life and it was where I discovered both my love of textiles and how contemporary and subversive they could be. I had never seen anything like the work I saw their students (and teachers) making and it opened my mind to just how malleable and creative any medium could be. For that reason, I will always (always!) have a soft spot for textile artists and makers coming from Savannah. So when I stumbled upon the work of artist/designer Trish Andersen on Instagram, I was hooked from the get-go.
Trish divides her time between Brooklyn, NY and Savannah, GA, where she focuses on tufting and immersive installations that embrace color and texture in such a bold and free-flowing way. What first caught my eye was her staircase installation (above), but I returned to her feed over and over to watch her process videos and peeks inside her amazing studio. While social media often gets a bad rap for being shallow or derivative, it...