About Ansel (They/Them)

Raised in Colorado, Ansel now calls verdant Seattle home. They have been working with fiber as long as they can remember, from learning to knit and sew with their mother and grandmothers as a child to the illustrious honor of being one of the first users of Ravelry (a community knitting forum) as a teenager. When not cuddling one of their two cats, they enjoy exploring local trails for inspiration with their rescue pup, Pumpkin.

Ansel is a folk artist who has been fortunate mostly to learn from community resources, often free and informal, rather than traditional art pedagogy, and their work explores the interplay between “craft” and “art”. Of late, Ansel is fascinated by the idea of mending as an act of individual and community resilience, and continues to work toward understanding where the fibers in their life come from, who made them, and what will happen when they are no longer of use.

Ansel’s work is often multidimensional and layered, drawing inspiration from the natural world and the origin of the fibers used, as well as their background as an engineer. Knitting, crocheting, watercolor, embroidery, sashiko, boro stitching, natural dyeing with foraged materials, and dyeing with indigo are all frequent components of Ansel’s artistic practice, and they highly value chances to collaborate and learn from others.