When I was home in Minnesota over the holidays, I spent a bit of time helping the rest of the family prepare my grandparents’ house to go up for sale. Part of that involved me digging through my grandmother’s craft room, which had largely been preserved since she passed away in 2012. She was a master weaver who could create beautiful scarves and rugs, many of which adorn the bodies and homes of our family. I was able to take a box of her unused fabric yardage, and it felt only appropriate to use some of that fabric in a project of renewal, recurrence, and hope.

I was also thinking a lot about the concept of the holiday card—sending out well wishes and updates at the end of a long year to the wide net of family and friends that have spread themselves across the land. It’s a tradition my parents keep devoutly, but not many within my own generation (at least, not amongst my cohort) have carried on this rite.

I chose to turn this fabric into a recurring block print, not to look back at the year that was but to look forward to the year ahead and send hope for strength and community as we turn to a year sure to be full of challenges and unsureness. The design of the print is an abstraction of the digits of year itself: 2 0 2 5. The modular nature of block-printing allowed for creating as many individual pieces as possible on the fabric, which ended up being about 90. Within the replicability of block-printing is the opportunity for unique frequencies and differences from print to print, some blobbier, some with a thicker application of ink, etc., which makes the composite form of the block-print perfect for an animated catalog of the individual units. I worked freely, anticipating and encouraging these minute differences rather than striving for exactly identical results.

Once printed and photographed, I packaged each piece up with a short note explaining the origin of the project and the wish for time together in the upcoming year and sent them out into the world, some via traditional post and some via hand delivery across Portland. It feels very much of the process to take the time to slip these into friends’ and accomplices’ mailboxes, creating a cartographical net of care across the city as I delivered them.

2025 New Year’s Print

The From Below Logo Tee

The World’s Greatest Sinner Tee