Holding On, Letting Go - by Debbie Barrett-Jones
Weaving is a journey of transformation through process—each thread physically touched, each movement a meditation, guiding the work from beginning to completion. The loom is a sanctuary, a space of rhythm and focus, where memory, creativity, and presence converge. Motherhood, with its mix of grief and joy, has profoundly shaped my practice: the necessity of letting go while still holding love.
In my makeshift craft room, I once shared space with my young daughters, setting boundaries around my loom on a rug they could not enter. In this installation, I expose the mess—both the chaos I have created and the disorder that was always present. By revealing it, memory, creativity, and motherhood are woven together, showing how daily life, play, and making coexist.
Weaving (and mothering), a form of time travel, visiting the past, present, and future into one continuous thread. And then, unweaving—the deliberate undoing of what has been made—teaches surrender, patience, and transformation. Amid the scattered objects of my children’s life and mine, the loom and its woven rug remain a grounding space of rhythm and calm, a meditation on connection, loss, and change.
Here, in the interplay of creation and release, I am continuously holding on and letting go, both as an artist, mother, and…