MAGNOLIA MEETS DANA for Building On Dana | Patterns in Space February 2025

Handwoven Cotton Naturally Dyed with Magnolia Seed Pods Foraged from Agnes Scott Campus Grounds

Magnolia Meets Dana is a woven response to the grand entryway of the Dana Fine Arts building, where brick unfolds like lace as light carves both space and structure. In researching Dana’s history and design, I was drawn to John Portman’s use of luminance as a dominant architectural element—a way of shaping space through the interplay of light and form. Like architecture, weaving is a system of interlocking forces—warp and weft binding together as beams and columns do. Just as Dana’s façade resembles a lace-like pattern in brick, weaving itself functions as an architectural language that balances openness with density, stability with fluidity. Both textiles and buildings serve as cultural records, embedding regional histories and values into their very structures and patterns.To deepen this dialogue, I turned to the ground beneath Dana itself. I foraged magnolia seed pods from the campus grounds and used them to naturally dye the cotton for this piece. In doing so, the physical landscape became part of the cloth, a literal entwinement of place and process. If Portman’s design sought to bring the outside in, then this work carries that idea further—embedding the very earth into the cloth, so that the building and its surroundings are not just reflected, but absorbed and held within the threads. In this way, the piece becomes more than a response— it becomes an extension of place, a material archive of both built and natural histories. Magnolia Meets Dana exists in dialogue with the building, mirroring its structural poetics while holding within its fibers the very earth from which it rises.

Images credits: Kaylinn Gilstrap