Collaborators: Delores Finlayson & Robin Watterson

Location: Lower East Side, NYC

This project serves as the inaugural case study for this practice. Over a two-year residency in the world of the Fantastic 4 Double Dutch team, I worked to move beyond the "temporary encounter" of social art and into a sustained partnership with founders Delores Finlayson and Robin Watterson.

The Methodology: Materializing the Social In this work, the batik process became the site where the relationship became material. I developed a visual vocabulary using the physical tools of the sport:

• The Neighborhood Loop: Utilizing jump rope cords as printing tools, I created motifs based on the specific way jumpers loop their ropes to travel through the city.

• Archiving Friction & Care: The "art" here included the non-aesthetic labor—the check-ins, the negotiations, and the trust-building. Every tension and breakthrough in our relationship was absorbed into the cloth through repeated, hands-on wax resistance.

The Reality: Holding the Contradiction Ultimately, this practice exists within a necessary tension. While the bonds with Delores and Robin are deep and ongoing, the project itself is temporally bounded by the cycles of my thesis and graduation. Relational Fabric Making does not try to solve this conflict; instead, it holds it.

It centers the "invisible" work—the mediation, the trust, and the hours of conversation—alongside the artistic labor of batik, insisting that the work is only formed through the balance of lived responsibility and institutional limits.

project 01:

relationship with delores and robin

“relationship with delores and robin”

PC: Abrihet Payne