Image courtesy of Sara+Sarah Smart Textiles – from the FLOCC project page.
www.smarttextile.design/flocc

Creating Meaning from What’s Left Behind

I’ve been following FLOCC, an initiative from Sara+Sarah Smart Textiles. Instead of beginning from a desire to invent, their project begins with a desire to use what is left behind. FLOCC turns recycled cotton clips into a soft, non-synthetic flock fibre for future making.

There is something generous in this approach. It does not ask us to produce more. Instead, it asks how we might begin again. Not by doing more, but by doing differently.

FLOCC focuses on sustainable textile innovation. The designers invite artists, makers, and researchers to consider how materials can return to circulation. They ask how circularity might shape not only form, but intention. Their attention to reuse feels grounded and considered.

While FLOCC does not frame its work as narrative or poetic, its quiet, practical approach to transformation resonates with my practice. I find something poetic in the way they work with what is left behind. There is a kind of care in this gesture that speaks to how I understand reuse.

In my own work, I am interested in what materials might say. I explore how weaving, puppetry, and environmental elements create story through texture and movement. FLOCC’s focus on transformation through attention and reuse feels connected to the kinds of questions I return to in my practice, even if the paths we take are different.

There is something in their care for materials that I feel emotionally connected to.