Sewing an Expanded Field: The Sewing Machine in Contemporary Art
What I loved most about my TSA (Textile Society of America) experience was the long-term collaboration and conversation it prompted within my presenting group. Over the course of nearly a year, we worked together not just to prepare a presentation, but to build a shared space of inquiry. Collectively, we took on the topic of the overlooked craft in contemporary sculpture, installation, and relational practices. We arrived, almost intuitively, at the sewing machine as our central focus—a tool that cuts across industries, disciplines, and traditions, and one that offered fertile ground to explore historical, cultural, and conceptual dimensions.
We met biweekly and then weekly over ten months, unraveling the complexity of the sewing machine—not just as a technical apparatus, but as a conceptual, political, and embodied site. The group dynamic became its own kind of studio. In that collective environment, I felt a new permission to bring the sewing machine unapologetically to the forefront of my art practice, without having to justify its presence or utility. Among our group, it was already understood to be a potent, layered instrument—an extension of the artist’s body, lineage, and positionality.
Our TSA presentation became a kind of laboratory—a space where we could test what it means to stitch, to piece, to overstuff, to mend, and to build form through thread. I brought with me a deep familial relationship to the sewing machine: I am the fourth generation in a line of seamstresses, and the first to use the machine beyond the confines of domestic or economic necessity. Through research and ongoing dialogue with my collaborators, that history stopped feeling like private luggage. It became fuel. Sewing emerged as an intentional gesture, charged with questions of labor, gender, repair, embodiment, and resilience.
In my work, the sewing machine is never hidden. Its traces are made visible in long seams, tight or broken threads, stretched vinyl, puckered polyester, and the tension lines where synthetic fibers are pulled to their structural edge. At the TSA symposium, I was able to amplify these choices—both in conversation and in context—by digging into the lineage of how and why the sewing machine has migrated from the factory floor and domestic space into the terrain of contemporary art. I wasn’t alone in this investigation. I was in dialogue with a group of artists equally committed to rethinking materials, tools, and inherited knowledge systems.
Working alongside Jeanne Le Medina was particularly transformative. Her practice incorporates fabric, gesture, and the ephemeral residue of presence. Through her lens, I came to see sewing as a form of embodied inscription—deliberate, quiet, and deeply relational. Jeanne treats softness with reverence. We often spoke about how the sewing machine registers time the way a dancer’s body does: looped, trained, and imperfect. Watching her work helped me see that sewing isn’t just about joining materials. It’s about transmitting care, memory, and transformation. Her work gave me permission to slow down and let process remain visible.
Annica Cuppetelli brought a completely different, equally impactful energy to our collaboration. Her mathematically informed, technology-driven use of the sewing machine challenged me to think about thread as data, and sewing as code. She introduced a language of glitch, iteration, and resistance. She also served as the admin for our project—an organizational anchor who helped coordinate timelines, structure our writing sessions, and build out our digital presence. With Annica, I began to think more critically about the tension between repetition and disruption, discipline and deviation. Her approach interrogates the machine as a system—one tied to women’s labor, body politics, and feedback loops both literal and cultural.
Being accepted as presenters at the TSA symposium gave us the external structure and deadline to create something more than a talk—it gave us a reason to build a shared digital space where we could reflect, question, and develop both individual and collective ideas. Our weekly meetings were often filled with passionate debate and the joy (and friction) of reexamining long-held assumptions. Those dialogues reshaped how I see the sewing machine. Not as a nostalgic symbol, but as a force—cultural, mechanical, conceptual—that deserves serious attention within contemporary art discourse.
What this project revealed to me is that the sewing machine should not be marginalized as a “craft” object. It is central. It stitches together conversations around labor, feminism, domesticity, industrialization, and material intelligence. Through this collaborative process, my own practice became bolder—larger, more physically demanding, more conceptually dense. I gained clarity around what I now call a culture of divergence within sewing: a field where experimentation is alive and well, even if it isn’t always given the spotlight it deserves.
The community at the TSA symposium supported this exploration wholeheartedly. We received thoughtful feedback and generous attendance for our presentation, which we rehearsed thoroughly, with care. The symposium gave me the platform to let the machine be loud—to let it break needles and skip stitches, to hum, to falter, to sing. It gave me the confidence to bring that energy into my research and teaching, and to continue positioning the sewing machine not as a peripheral tool, but as an active collaborator.
And in all its contradictions, that machine still is.
Abbie Miller (b. 1981, Billings, Montana) is a sculptor, designer, and educator whose work merges fashion, craft, and conceptual installation. She holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and has taught in the Applied Craft and Design MFA program at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Using materials like vinyl and double-knit polyester, Miller creates sculptural forms that explore embodiment, labor, and care. Her work has been exhibited at the Missoula Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is held in permanent collections. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she also works as a gallerist and auctions manager.
