Lee Davignon (They/She) is a textile and installation artist living and working in the Cascade foothills of Washington. Born and raised in Rhode Island, they earned their BFA in Fibers from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2013. Davignon’s sculpture and installation form out of a material-led investigation that exists at the intersection of waste stream materials an extensive library of craft skills. Her work has been shown at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum, Fuller Craft Museum,  SOIL, SAM ReMix, Spring Break NYC, Shunpike Storefronts, The Factory, and the Klondike National Historical Park. They are currently a member of SOIL, a non-hierarchical artist-run gallery space in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle.

I am a mixed media artist working in textiles, sculpture, and installation. Combining craft techniques, sculptural experiments, and material play, my work challenges frameworks of labor, waste, and value. I work in the waste stream, mining my own daily interactions for objects like used bike tires from my local bike shop and bits from construction sites and the textile industry. My material collection is processed into both weavings and sculpture in a cross-pollinating dance.  It’s a bit like composting. In this way my work acts as a material mapping, tracing my connections and creating a fleeting sense of familiarity for viewers who may recognize the print on a plastic newspaper bag or the texture of a sweatshirt. Working in the waste stream allows me to be playful with my work, asking questions and gauging responses: can it be stretched, layered, cut, punctured, soaked, knotted, or stiffened? These freeform interactions lead to moments of discovery and inspiration in everything from the artful wire loops of a commercial electrician, molded plastic packaging, and the knots in the remnant of a marine rope. The ritual of crafting an object resurrects and reinterprets waste materials into moments of beauty, discovery, and integration.