April Artist Spotlight: Niku Arbabi

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Apr 11

Niku Arbabi

1) How did you start doing art and what is your medium?

I’ve always been a maker! I’m particularly drawn to everything fiber but also paper, color in all things, and the ephemeral magic of everyday objects. Most of my work is textile related, but I also like overlapping mediums and pushing at the boundaries of “art” and “craft”, perpetually exploring and experimenting.

For the past 10 years my creative practice and work as a teacher has been particularly focused on slow/sustainable fashion, modern quilting, embroidery, and textile printing, plus zine making, mail art, and (paper) collage and I find that they all inform and influence each other.

2) How does reuse play a part in your art?

Reuse helps me relate to objects more thoughtfully and creatively. They help me see a whole new world of possibilities in objects and the way we relate to them, and the impact they have and that we have on our world.

Reuse is an important element in my teaching practice because it’s one way we can make craft and creative communities more accessible, amplify more voices, and build a stronger community.

Reuse can help take pressure and risk out of trying something new so we can take that leap and see where it leads, and keep growing creatively.

Reuse helps energize the fundamental idea that everyone is an artist and that you don’t need a perfect tool to make good and important art, which is integral to my teaching and collaborations.

And it’s crucial to my life as I work to sustain as a freelance creative in a society that doesn’t tend to value or support that. Reuse empowers on so many levels!

3) What compels you to donate to ACR?

I’m definitely a maximalist, as a maker and as a collector. Donating to ACR helps me feel like I’m sort of keeping all those treasures and just loaning them out without actually having to keep all of it. I think of ACR as a temporary holding area for all of our supplies, so I can share my stuff, and I can borrow things back again when I need them. And I get to see my stuff go to a place that treats every object as a resource with possibility rather than trash.

4) Where can we find out more about your art?

Find me at my website www.xostitches.net and @xostitches on Instagram