Unending Spiral, 2025
dyed pine needles, reed, waxed thread, stoneware
15.5 x 22 x 22 inches
Spiral Rotation, 2025
dyed pine needles, waxed thread, stoneware
13 x 9 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches
Earthloop, 2024
dyed pine needles, waxed thread, stoneware
13 x 9 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches
Unending Spiral examines the structural and conceptual implications of the spiral as both a formal strategy and a conceptual framework, drawing parallels between galactic formations and terrestrial craft traditions in textiles, coiled ceramics, and basketry. By employing materials of the earth—hand-dyed pine needles, clay, and fiber—Rosalena grounds her work in tactile, site-responsive processes while simultaneously engaging digital technologies with her hand. The pine needles are naturally dyed in plants such as cochineal, walnut, and onion skin, producing a living palette. These material disruptions interrogate the hierarchies that have historically positioned Indigenous craft in opposition to digital methodologies, proposing instead a continuum in which traditional knowledge and emerging technologies co-generate one another, revealing the spiral as a structure of persistence, recursion, and self-perpetuation.
Using digital images of spirals in nature, such as spiral arms of galaxies—Rosalena translates these celestial bodies into handwoven patterns and coiled forms. Her 3D-printed ceramic vessels simulate the process of traditional coil building, yet they resist containment; partway through, the ceramic coils give way to handwoven pine needle basketry, a material intervention that disrupts technological precision with the irregularities of the organic. By positioning the spiral as a recursive, non-linear structure, Unending Spiral challenges dominant narratives of progress, which privilege forward motion and technological advancement over cyclical, regenerative knowledge systems, foregrounding craft as a site of critical resistance and epistemological expansion. Through these hybrid forms, Rosalena posits an alternative material cosmology—one that is iterative, interwoven, and perpetually in infinite motion.
Link to exhibition:
Unending Spiral
Blum Gallery