01. Bio
Portrait of my late mentor, Stephane Herbelin, and me in Paris, France.Phoebe Plank is a fiber artist who completed her master’s in fine arts at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) in Savannah in spring 2024. Born and raised between the bay of Massachusetts and the Adirondack mountains, her studio practice is inspired by an effort to waste nothing and appreciate materials entirely.
With a background in languages and economics (fluent in French and Spanish; conversational in German and Portuguese), she received her BA in International Studies from Middlebury College. Phoebe works with natural, foraged, and waste materials to create sensory experiences and whimsical art objects (works in sculpture, fiber, weaving, natural dye, ceramics, drawing and up-cycled fashion). An avid forager, naturalist, and advocate for sustainable food systems, Phoebe served as General Manager of a traceable whole grain economy project and specialty pasta business, Community Grains in Oakland, CA from 2017-2019. In 2020 after spending time volunteering on farms in Brazil and Italy, Phoebe decided to reconsider a childhood passion for textiles and color. With recycling at the center of her ethos, she started Third Hand Clothes, a project to up-cycle clothing waste and perform mending services within her community.
In 2022 she moved to Savannah to develop her textile knowledge and studio art practice. Her MFA thesis solo exhibition is titled, Stick Work: Art to Make Live consisting of an extensive collection of found object sculpture (centering on sticks and twigs) as well as accompanying material studies in wool felt, pine needles, natural scent, and natural dye. She has shown her work in multiple interactive exhibitions at Pepe Hall (SCAD fibers department building), as well as at local galleries (notably, Gallery 2424’s group show “One by One”, and in a group in situ installation at Sulfur Studios for ARTS Southeast’s annual Art on Bull Fundraising Event). For her MFA thesis work she received the Surface Design award for outstanding students in the spring of 2024. Upon graduating she will be based in the south of France with the intention to further develop her up-cycling and art of living studio practice.
02. artist statement
My practice expands upon the art of living. I engage in a critical craft and living art practice to deal with alienation and othering. I see our alienation from nature, from each other, and too often from ourselves as a fundamental problem of our time—a vicious cycle feeding and fed by our traumatic histories and extractive consumer dependencies—with consequences as wide as climate change, as deep as depression, and as pervasive as war. I’ve found that working with fiber, whether that is raw wool, natural dye, fabric, thread, or food; allows one to observe plainly the nature of the universe and come into ease with it. Through the language of craft, I sculpt, stitch, draw, weave, repair and assemble art objects and experiences in quiet, sensory ways.
My research is geared towards building bridges across disciplines—linguistics, the sciences, ancient cultures—as well as across parts of life—feeding oneself, engaging with others, making art. In smoothing these gaps, I seek a wholeness with all things. My work is a practice of embedding oneself in the present moment, and engaging especially with what remains of our wild common spaces. At home in the woods, I am often bringing the outside inside. And then with my work, I invite you inside my inside. I do this work to heal myself, to heal my relationships, to heal the world. I do it to nourish the body, the mind, and the earth.
Foraging is central to my work, whether that is collecting fruits and fibers in the forest, words in conversation, or salvaged “waste” from the community. I pick out storied materials that are often overlooked or targeted with herbicides. By spending extensive time with my materials, I can slowly overcome a habit to discard or ignore, and instead begin to build relationship. I am interested in the wisdom gleaned through quiet activism and gestures that acknowledge animism.
I am drawn to processes that are satisfying in scent or feel—freshly plucked pine needles, rehydrated grasses, simmering roots. In an effort not to separate myself from these experienced materials, I leave them largely untreated, often fading quickly in time. I consider wide timescales and the value of process over object. There is a poetry coming from the detailed labor and fragile, fleeting nature of the work. Without making things overly precious, I offer their gesture and beauty for contemplation. My work encourages those that interact with it to open their senses, touch gently, and tune their vision towards possibility.
03. Teaching PhilosophyI am someone who turns to art in crisis — whether this is the small everyday crisis of boredom, an acute household need, a more severe relational issue, or the existential terrors of life unraveling. I have found that the knowledge of craft, ancient cultures, conceptual art, and critical theory can be of great service for processing emotions, expressing one’s voice, and crawling out of the holes we dig for ourselves. A language enthusiast, fluent in French, Spanish, and English, I am especially keen to work with persons studying abroad and interested in expanding their conception of their world as well as their work in times when they feel out of place.
With an MFA in Fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and a bachelor’s in international studies, French and Economics from Middlebury College, I am equipped to tackle a broad range of subject matter with a uniquely creative, interdisciplinary, and sustainably minded pedagogy. At the university level I am qualified to teach a mix of traditional fiber craft, material-based research/exploration, and abstract sculpture/mark-making. I have teaching experience in natural dye, foraged material weaving, and abstract scrap self-portraiture. I also have extensive experience with ceramics, wet felting, sewing, poetry, and cooking. Whatever I teach I find it essential that the educator consider the interdisciplinary possibilities of the subject, and that lessons mix the physical with the conceptual. I find the physical act of making, of moving the body, of interacting with material and place to be one of the most valuable and enduring teachers, leading one directly to poignant conceptual development and greater historical understanding. I am most interested in helping to build students’ relationship with their work through acute understanding not only of how the maker affects the material, but how the material and the mode of making affects the maker.
My manifesto for my own art of living is that one must embody themselves at once as a child, a student, and a guardian. My mission as an educator is to enliven these parts of the individuals I meet to encourage their childish clarity for creation, their disciplined attention to research and repetition, as well as their evolution towards guardianship of their own passions and values. I am interested in working with individuals at any stage, and any age, make the most of their lives through creativity, research, and functional making (even if only “functional” in subtle sensorial ways).