Process · Pigment · Listening · Time · Rhythm · Slowness
About
Hi, I'm Melba, a textile artist working with embodied making practices.
My work begins in the body and unfolds through movement, repetition, and attention. Cloth is held as a responsive field — shaped by weight, rhythm, stain, and time. Rather than working toward an image or outcome, I stay with process as it reveals itself through sustained engagement with material.
I work with plant dyes and sustainable pigments on natural fibres. Colour arrives slowly, through layering, waiting, and return.
This practice is shaped by lived experience and everyday rhythms, and guided by the quiet intelligence of the body. It is grounded in making, listening, and remaining with what is already here.
I live and work in Western Australia.
Field of Cloths
This is where my textiles begin — in a slow, open field of colour, movement, and cloth.
I work through listening, letting breath, water, and touch guide the process. Marks may arrive as sweeping lines of sustainable pigment, or as soft blooms of natural dye carried by water and gravity.
Silk, cotton, and found fabrics hold memory.
They respond to the body.
They shift with time.
Some Field Cloths are made to hang in space.
Some are made to be worn.
Each holds a living field — a place where stillness, emotion, and creative energy can gently find their own balance.
From the Studio
This is where my Field Cloths are born — through movement, pigment, water, and quiet listening.
In the studio, silk is soaked, walked with, lifted, and left to rest.
Natural dyes and sustainable pigments are allowed to travel through fabric, guided by gravity, breath, and time.
Nothing is rushed.
Nothing is forced.
Some days are full of colour and motion.
Others are still, with cloth simply hanging in the light, waiting.
Each piece carries the memory of how it was made — the pauses, the gestures, the weather, the mood of the day.
This is a place where attention gathers.
