About Me

I’m Elena Fouch-Watson, a Michigan-raised, West Virginia-dwelling fiber artist. As a child I was raised to relieve boredom with paints, pencils, and tubs of scrap fabric and yarn when I wasn’t romping around the woods with my sisters. As I grew older I convinced myself that I wasn’t artistic because I felt I didn’t have the natural talent for drawing and painting that ran in the family. Besides one semester of ceramics I took for fun in college, my creative outlet dwindled to an occasional sewing or craft project while I fully embraced my love of the natural world by becoming a rock climber. Eventually climbing and guiding brought me and my husband to the New River Gorge region in 2017, where we fell in love with the rocks, rivers, and mountains of West Virginia, and where I also discovered a vibrant art scene that inspired me to make space for creativity in my life. For Christmas of the same year I was gifted a small frame loom and it lit a spark in me. Since then, I have been obsessively teaching myself traditional and contemporary weaving techniques and design by experimentation, observing the work of other weavers and artists, and paying attention to the colors, shapes, and textures everywhere I look. As I learn how to manipulate yarns and fibers to materialize my imaginings of the world in and around me, the act and art of tapestry weaving is transforming my own imagination to see things differently.

Tapestry weaving, to me, is often just as much about the act of weaving (or occasional furious knotting, as my mood dictates) as it is about the end result. I feel most free in my work when I employ an improvisational method that follows no real plan except what texture or color I reach for, and what shapes and patterns emerge on the loom. I love to use sensuous natural fibers, such as wool, cotton, silk, and flax in vivid and lush colors and shades. While I enjoy making beautiful work, my favorite art to create aims to evoke curiosity and a sense of mischievous playfulness in the viewer. The result is a collection of work that is sometimes calm and pleasing to the eye, while at other times dizzying and unsettling; occasionally it is all of the above. One of my goals as a weaver of wall hangings (which abound in the form of cheaply produced machine-made wall decor) is to allow myself and inspire other fiber artists to create weird art, reflecting the beautiful weirdness of the world around us.