OVER UNDER - Paper Weaving
SEASON 8 | PROJECT 2/52 | 11.04.26
MODULE: Fiber Arts | GRADE LEVELS: TK - 6 | DURATION: 1 Hour
ARTIST VIDEO
Video Editing by Jorge Davies, Graphics by Melissa Sabol
PROJECT VIDEO
OVERVIEW
What happens when you cut a picture apart and weave it back together? Something completely unexpected! For thousands of years, people have woven materials like grass, fiber, and thread to create beautiful and useful objects. This project is inspired by artist Clair Case, who combines traditional techniques like sewing and weaving with unexpected materials. Using magazine images and colorful paper, students will cut, weave, and transform an ordinary picture into a one-of-a-kind work of art. As the pieces come together, new patterns and surprising details emerge, changing not only how the picture looks, but how we see it! And when students turn their weaving over, they'll discover a surprise: a second, completely different work of art!
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
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Pattern & Repetition - Weaving introduces students to pattern through the repetition of over-and-under movements. As they alternate strips of paper, students begin to recognize how simple actions can create complex designs. They learn how repeating a shape, color, or movement can establish rhythm and visual interest.
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Fine Motor Skills & Coordination - Cutting, arranging, and weaving paper strips encourage students to develop hand-eye coordination, precision, and fine motor control. Students practice following a sequence of movements while learning to handle materials carefully and independently.
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Composition & Intentional Decision-Making - Students explore how the placement, width, and color of each strip affects the final artwork. They make decisions about which images to combine, how to incorporate their strips, and how to respond when unexpected patterns emerge. They begin to understand how individual parts contribute to a larger composition.
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Color, Contrast & Visual Relationships - When an image and colored strips are woven together, details begin to interact in unexpected ways. Students discover how contrasting colors and repeating patterns can transform the appearance of an image. They learn that placing two things next to each other can change how each one is seen and understood.
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Transformation & Creative Problem-Solving - Cutting an image apart can feel like destroying something familiar, but weaving allows students to reconstruct it in a completely new way. They learn to experiment, adapt, and find creative solutions as they work through the weaving process. An image that once looked ordinary can become abstract, fragmented, or surprisingly different.
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Material Exploration & Mixed Media - Students discover that weaving is not limited to yarn or fabric. Artists can weave photographs, paper, natural materials, and other found objects. By experimenting with different materials, students begin to understand how the qualities of a material, its flexibility, thickness, color, and texture affect the artwork.
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Creative Confidence & Self-Expression - There is no single correct way to combine images or create a pattern. Each student's choices produce a different result, even when everyone begins with similar materials. Students learn to embrace experimentation, appreciate unexpected discoveries, and recognize that their individual decisions are what make their artwork unique.
MATERIALS
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Magazine pages, photographs, or printed images
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Colored construction paper or cardstock
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Scissors
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Glue sticks
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Painters tape
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Wood skewer
FEATURED ARTIST
CLAIR CASE
Clair Case is a multidisciplinary artist based in Yucca Valley, CA, whose work explores photography, fiber arts, weaving, and alternative printing processes. With a background in art history and photography, Clair creates handwoven and sewn works that explore identity, representation, and the ways women are portrayed in popular culture. Through traditional techniques and unexpected materials, she transforms familiar images and objects into contemporary works of art that invite us to look more closely. Her practice also includes cyanotypes, a photographic process that uses sunlight to create images inspired by nature and the changing landscapes around her.
ARTISTS TO KNOW
Anni Albers
Anni Albers (1899–1994) was a pioneering textile artist, designer, and educator who transformed weaving into a modern form of fine art. Born in Germany, she studied and later taught at the influential Bauhaus art school, where she experimented with weaving as a way to explore color, pattern, texture, and structure. Her woven works often feature bold geometric shapes, repeating patterns, and unexpected combinations of natural and synthetic materials. Rather than treating textiles simply as functional objects, Albers approached weaving as a form of visual expression, creating intricate compositions that could stand on their own as works of art. She was also deeply inspired by ancient weaving traditions, particularly textiles from Central and South America, and explored how traditional techniques could inform contemporary design. Later in her career, she expanded her practice into printmaking, continuing to investigate the relationships between color, shape, and pattern. Through her work, Albers demonstrates how simple materials and repeated structures can be transformed into complex and beautiful compositions.
Anni Albers, Hanging, 1967 (designed 1926), Woven silk and rayon, 79 9/10 × 46 9/10 in.
Aasha John
Aasha John is an artist and educator whose mixed-media weaving practice explores family history, memory, cultural identity, and connection across generations. She creates woven works using photographs, scanned fabrics, and other materials drawn from family archives. By cutting these images and materials into strips and weaving them together, John transforms individual fragments into compositions that hold multiple stories at once. Her process reflects the way memories are gathered, shared, and carried forward, with each fragment contributing to a larger whole. Through her work, John demonstrates how weaving can become a way of preserving personal histories and reconnecting with the past. Her practice also shows how everyday photographs and meaningful materials can be reimagined through an artistic process.
Aasha John, Jo Anne III, Mixed Media Weaving, 2026
I-Chun Jenkins
I-Chun Jenkins is a fiber artist whose practice explores the possibilities of transforming everyday materials into intricate, sculptural works of art. Originally from Taiwan, Jenkins draws inspiration from the colors, textures, and natural beauty of her upbringing. Her work combines traditional weaving techniques with unconventional materials, including recycled paper and plastic, which she weaves, twists, crochets, and shapes into dimensional compositions. Interested in the relationship between art, material, and the environment, Jenkins reimagines discarded materials as something unexpected and beautiful. Her work often takes on architectural qualities, transforming flat, familiar materials into intricate structures and abstract forms. Through her practice, Jenkins demonstrates how traditional fiber techniques can be adapted to new materials and how everyday objects can be given an entirely new life.
I-Chun Jenkins, Untitled, Woven recycled magazine paper
Rachel Sperry
Rachel Sperry is an artist who combines photography, collage, and weaving to explore images, patterns, and the ways we see the world. She cuts photographs and printed images into strips, then interlaces them to create woven compositions that combine two images into a new visual experience. Her work often draws from magazines, fashion imagery, and advertising, allowing recognizable photographs to become abstract patterns of color, shape, and texture. Sperry is interested in the unexpected relationships that emerge when images overlap and interrupt one another. Her process demonstrates how cutting an image apart does not mean losing it; instead, the pieces can be rearranged to create something entirely new. Her work offers a direct example of how weaving can transform the way we see familiar pictures.
Rachel Sperry, Memory Series, Photographic Weaving, Current Work
Sarah Sense
Sarah Sense is a Chitimacha and Choctaw artist known for combining photography with traditional weaving techniques. Drawing on her Indigenous heritage and family connections to basket weaving, she creates woven photographs that bring together contemporary imagery, historical photographs, maps, and cultural references. By cutting images into strips and weaving them together, Sense creates layered compositions that explore identity, history, cultural representation, and the relationships between people and place. Her work connects traditional knowledge with contemporary artistic practices, demonstrating how weaving can carry stories as well as create patterns. Sense's practice encourages viewers to consider how images communicate meaning and how combining different visual sources can reveal new connections between the past and present.
Sarah Sense, Weaving Water 28, Mixed Media, 2013
Lisa Barense
Lisa Barense is an artist whose paper-based practice explores collage, weaving, found materials, and the unexpected possibilities of everyday printed matter. She has woven pages from old books, yearbooks, and other printed sources, transforming existing material into intricate compositions. By cutting and interlacing pages, Barense allows words, photographs, colors, and patterns to intersect in surprising ways. Her work draws attention to the physical qualities of paper and the possibilities of reusing materials that might otherwise be discarded. Through repetition and rearrangement, familiar printed pages become new visual objects, demonstrating how an artist can work with what already exists rather than starting from scratch. Her approach encourages students to experiment with found images and discover new possibilities in ordinary materials.
Lisa Barense, Weave 9, Photographic Weaving
VOCABULARY
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Abstract – Art that does not try to look exactly like real life. Instead, artists use color, shape, line, texture, and form to communicate ideas or create an experience.
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Collage – An artwork made by assembling different materials, images, or pieces onto a surface.
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Composition – The way different elements are arranged in your artwork to create balance, movement, or visual interest.
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Contrast – A noticeable difference between elements, such as light and dark, smooth and rough, or large and small.
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Found Materials – Everyday or discarded objects and materials that artists collect and use to make artwork.
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Fragmentation – Breaking an image or object into smaller pieces or parts.
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Image Weaving – A technique that involves cutting photographs or printed images into strips and weaving them together to create a new composition.
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Interlacing – Passing strips or strands over and under one another so that they connect.
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Mixed Media – Artwork made using two or more different materials or artistic techniques.
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Negative Space – The empty or open areas around and between the elements of an artwork.
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Pattern – A repeated arrangement of shapes, colors, lines, or other elements.
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Reconstruction – The process of putting separate pieces or parts back together to create something new.
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Repetition – Using the same shape, color, material, or movement more than once.
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Texture – How something looks or feels on its surface. Texture can be physical, such as the roughness of a material, or visual, created through patterns and images.
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Transform – To change something into a new form or give it a different appearance.
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Visual Relationship – The way different elements interact with one another through color, shape, pattern, placement, or contrast.
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Warp – The set of parallel threads or strips held in place as the foundation for weaving. In paper weaving, these are the strips that remain attached to the base paper.
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Weft - The threads or strips woven over and under the warp to create a pattern or surface. In paper weaving, these are the strips students weave through the base paper.