34.7998° N, 87.6773° W
ENCOUNTERS
For more than thirty-six years, my work has been about encounter: building things whose purpose is to bring the viewer into contact with something they weren't expecting to find—a story, a stranger, a piece of history, a version of themselves.
SABBATICAL — 1999–2000
In late 1999, Chanin begins a sabbatical centered on photography, writing, and observation. Traveling through Venezuela, she turns from a decade of commercial image-making toward a more personal practice shaped by repetition, encounter, and attention.
The photographs, taken in a bill-operated photo booth on a Nolita sidewalk, were raw and immediate—images of myself without past or future, simply in the now.
Natalie Chanin, from the essay “On Image,” The Studio Journal, Issue 7, Fall 2025.
HAND-SEWN T-SHIRTS — 2000
Working with secondhand cotton T-shirts, Chanin cut the garments apart and reconstructed them by hand, reversing their conventional construction. Seams, knots, and raw edges were turned outward; what had once been hidden on the inside became visible on the surface. The gesture established a material language that would continue through her work: exposing structure, labor, and the evidence of the hand.
Everything that was once on the inside was now raw and exposed to the outside world.
Natalie Chanin, as told on The Moth, “200 One-of-a-Kind Shirts,” April 17, 2014.
Natalie Chanin, as told on The Moth, “200 One-of-a-Kind Shirts,” April 17, 2014.
ALABAMA — 2000
Lovelace Crossroads, Alabama
In December 2000, Chanin returns home to The Shoals with the idea of making two hundred one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn T-shirts.
She gathers a group of women from the community—quilters, seamstresses, family, friends, and neighbors—and begins translating the garments she had been making in New York into a collective practice. Cotton jersey is cut apart and rebuilt by hand using techniques rooted in quilting, embroidery, and everyday sewing.
The work becomes Alabama: garments made by many hands, shaped by the knowledge of a place and the people who live there.
What begins as a collection becomes a way of working—connecting design to labor, material, community, and place.
In December 2000, Chanin returns home to The Shoals with the idea of making two hundred one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn T-shirts.
She gathers a group of women from the community—quilters, seamstresses, family, friends, and neighbors—and begins translating the garments she had been making in New York into a collective practice. Cotton jersey is cut apart and rebuilt by hand using techniques rooted in quilting, embroidery, and everyday sewing.
The work becomes Alabama: garments made by many hands, shaped by the knowledge of a place and the people who live there.
What begins as a collection becomes a way of working—connecting design to labor, material, community, and place.
THE KITCHEN PROJECT — 2005
In 2005, Chanin develops The Kitchen Project, inspired by the oral-history work of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Working with Angie Mosier, Robert Rausch, and Tom Driver, the work documents people in their homes, kitchens, and places of work across Alabama. Portraits, handwritten recipes, clothing, and stories come together in a catalog that expands the practice beyond the garment and into foodways, oral history, place, and everyday life
In 2005, Chanin develops The Kitchen Project, inspired by the oral-history work of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Working with Angie Mosier, Robert Rausch, and Tom Driver, the work documents people in their homes, kitchens, and places of work across Alabama. Portraits, handwritten recipes, clothing, and stories come together in a catalog that expands the practice beyond the garment and into foodways, oral history, place, and everyday life
THE BBQ DRESS PROJECT — 2012
In 2012, Chanin works with Drew Robinson for the Southern Foodways Alliance’s symposium on barbecue. A collection of white, hand-sewn Alabama Chanin wedding dresses is exposed to fire and smoke, staining and transforming the cloth. The dresses are displayed on bed frames used as barbecue devices alongside Landon Nordeman’s photographs of pitmasters, pigs, and barbecue culture. The project brings garment, ritual, foodways, and material transformation into a single installation.
THE COTTON PROJECT — 2012–2014
In 2012, Chanin plants six acres of organic cotton in North Alabama with farmers Katie and KP McNeill, Billy Reid, and more than three hundred neighbors, friends, and volunteers. The project follows cotton from field to fiber, tracing the material back through agriculture, labor, community, and regional textile systems. What begins as a collective act of planting becomes a sustained investigation into the relationships between land, making, and the material itself.
ALABAMA ON ALABAMA — 2015
In 2015, Chanin presents Alabama on Alabama at the Boiler Room at Heath Ceramics in San Francisco. Bringing together her textiles and quilts with work by Alabama artists Butch Anthony and John Henry Toney and photographer Rinne Allen, the exhibition considers a contemporary South through place, material, process, and tradition. Chanin’s indigo-dyed textiles and Textile Story Quilts extend the work beyond clothing into installation, memory, and the cultural landscape of Alabama.
THE COTTON PROJECT — 2012–2014
In 2012, Chanin plants six acres of organic cotton in North Alabama with farmers Katie and KP McNeill, Billy Reid, and more than three hundred neighbors, friends, and volunteers. The project follows cotton from field to fiber, tracing the material back through agriculture, labor, community, and regional textile systems. What begins as a collective act of planting becomes a sustained investigation into the relationships between land, making, and the material itself.
In 2015, Chanin presents Alabama on Alabama at the Boiler Room at Heath Ceramics in San Francisco. Bringing together her textiles and quilts with work by Alabama artists Butch Anthony and John Henry Toney and photographer Rinne Allen, the exhibition considers a contemporary South through place, material, process, and tradition. Chanin’s indigo-dyed textiles and Textile Story Quilts extend the work beyond clothing into installation, memory, and the cultural landscape of Alabama.
TEXTILE STORIES — 2007-PRESENT
Beginning in 2007, Chanin developed an ongoing body of work using garments and textiles as carriers of memory, biography, and place. Hand stitching, appliqué, embroidery, repair, and reuse became ways of recording lived experience while preserving evidence of the maker and the material.
Oral histories of labor were transcribed into cloth and embroidered into quilts, creating permanent material records of individual and collective experience.
This body of work, titled Textile Stories, explores how cloth can hold memory and history—and how making can become a form of storytelling
Oral histories of labor were transcribed into cloth and embroidered into quilts, creating permanent material records of individual and collective experience.
This body of work, titled Textile Stories, explores how cloth can hold memory and history—and how making can become a form of storytelling
THE SELF-PORTRAIT PROJECT — 2000
Beginning with a reconstructed T-shirt in February 2000, The Self-Portrait Project developed through daily making, photo-booth portraits, and stickers placed throughout New York and other cities.
The SIOSEH project was described by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as "not really a magazine but a work of art."
The stickers made the invisible visible.
Natalie Chanin, from the essay “On Image,” The Studio Journal, Issue 7, Fall 2025.
ABOVE After the Sabbatical, Brooklyn to NYC, February 2000.
AT LEFT Prince Farm, March 2000.
BELOW SIOSEH 7, “Stickers,” published by Sissi Farassat, June 2000.
SIOSEH 7 — 2000
AT LEFT Sample Card inviting reader to use the sticker in their own city to join The Self-Portrait Project.
From the title page of SIOSEH 7:
Natalie Chanins Stickers bereisen die Welt belegen ihren Besuch. In U-Bahnen, Museen, Bars hinterlässt sie wohl plaziert ihr Bild, ist
abwesend doch präsent. Zurzeit in New York, demnächst in Wien...
Natalie Chanin’s stickers travel the world, marking her visit. In subways, museums, and bars, she leaves her image carefully placed—absent, yet present. Currently in New York, soon in Vienna...
ABOVE Sample Card from SIOSEH 7 inviting reader to use the sticker in their own city to join The Self-Portrait Project.
STITCH — 2000–2001Stitch grew from the first Project Alabama collections and the community of women who made them. Filmed in and around Florence, Alabama, the documentary follows the handwork, conversations, homes, and landscapes surrounding the project, placing the garments within a larger story of labor, skill, memory, and place.
The film marks an early expansion of Chanin’s practice beyond the object itself—toward the people, histories, and systems held within making.
LOLA SCHNABEL COLLABORATION— 2002
In 2002, artist Lola Schnabel comes to Florence, Alabama, where Chanin and local artisans work to interpret Schnabel’s drawings through the language of regional craft. Schnabel hand-paints and embellishes each reconstructed cotton T-shirt. The garments are then hand-stitched and embellished with visible seams, looping stitches, beads, teeth, and collected amulets. The collaboration results in 200 one-of-a-kind garments that bring Schnabel’s dark, talismanic imagery into cloth and handwork.
In 2002, artist Lola Schnabel comes to Florence, Alabama, where Chanin and local artisans work to interpret Schnabel’s drawings through the language of regional craft. Schnabel hand-paints and embellishes each reconstructed cotton T-shirt. The garments are then hand-stitched and embellished with visible seams, looping stitches, beads, teeth, and collected amulets. The collaboration results in 200 one-of-a-kind garments that bring Schnabel’s dark, talismanic imagery into cloth and handwork.
MICHI MEKO COLLABORATION— 2005
In 2004, Chanin begins working with Florence-born, Atlanta-based artist Michi Meko, interpreting his graffiti-based imagery. Meko’s marks are translated onto cotton jersey through paint, stencil, reverse appliqué, hand-stitching, and embroidery, becoming garments that bring together his graphic vocabulary and Chanin’s evolving language of regional craft. The work is presented in 2005.
WORKS IN PROCESS — 2018
AN INTERACTIVE EXHIBITION
THE HAMBIDGE CENTER RESIDENCY
In collaboration with Rachel GarceauDeveloped during a residency at The Hambidge Center, Works in Process examined making as both action and record. Created with artist Rachel Garceau, the interactive exhibition brought together objects, materials, tools, and works in various stages of completion, inviting viewers to encounter process rather than only finished form.
The project extended Chanin’s ongoing interest in labor, repetition, collaboration, and the visible evidence of the hand.
I love the idea that a photographer may take a picture of a tree which then becomes a writer's inspiration for a short story, which in turn inspires an architect to design the entrance to a building inspired by the idea of a tree.
Natalie Chanin, "Starts with a Stitch," Blackberry Magazine, January 6, 2021.
My work begins with encounter.
I am interested in what happens when a person comes into contact with a material, a story, a place, or another person—and especially when something previously hidden becomes visible. I have worked across textiles, photography, film, writing, installation, archives, and collaborative making, but these forms are connected by the same questions: What does material remember? Where does work reside? How is knowledge carried through the hand? What can a place reveal when we become curious and learn how to read it?
Making is both subject and method in my practice. It is repetition, handwork, documentation, conversation, and the full circle of materials—from the earth to the earth.
Cloth is never only cloth; it carries histories of agriculture, humanity, manufacturing, trade, use, repair, life, and the body. A stitch can be structural, decorative, mnemonic, or evidentiary. I learned early in my practice that a garment can be a portrait, an archive, or a map.
For more than twenty-six years, my work has been rooted in place. Working from one community over time has allowed the practice to widen rather than narrow. The work led to land; land led to agriculture, economy, memory, and community; and those inquiries led increasingly toward the connections among them.
I am drawn to interactions that reveal the unseen: seams turned inside out; the visible hand of the maker left intact. When that hand is not erased, I see poetry. In this work, oral histories are transcribed into cloth. Photographs record encounters. Installations bring objects, people, and histories into relationship with one another. Films become memory. The work often becomes collaborative because the histories embedded in materials are collective.
Across the work, that inquiry now runs on two parallel tracks: material research into what cotton can become — biological, compostable, regenerative — and Mapping Cotton, which asks what cotton reveals about land, labor, and memory. Different questions, the same obsession.
I am interested in what happens when a person comes into contact with a material, a story, a place, or another person—and especially when something previously hidden becomes visible. I have worked across textiles, photography, film, writing, installation, archives, and collaborative making, but these forms are connected by the same questions: What does material remember? Where does work reside? How is knowledge carried through the hand? What can a place reveal when we become curious and learn how to read it?
Making is both subject and method in my practice. It is repetition, handwork, documentation, conversation, and the full circle of materials—from the earth to the earth.
Cloth is never only cloth; it carries histories of agriculture, humanity, manufacturing, trade, use, repair, life, and the body. A stitch can be structural, decorative, mnemonic, or evidentiary. I learned early in my practice that a garment can be a portrait, an archive, or a map.
For more than twenty-six years, my work has been rooted in place. Working from one community over time has allowed the practice to widen rather than narrow. The work led to land; land led to agriculture, economy, memory, and community; and those inquiries led increasingly toward the connections among them.
I am drawn to interactions that reveal the unseen: seams turned inside out; the visible hand of the maker left intact. When that hand is not erased, I see poetry. In this work, oral histories are transcribed into cloth. Photographs record encounters. Installations bring objects, people, and histories into relationship with one another. Films become memory. The work often becomes collaborative because the histories embedded in materials are collective.
Across the work, that inquiry now runs on two parallel tracks: material research into what cotton can become — biological, compostable, regenerative — and Mapping Cotton, which asks what cotton reveals about land, labor, and memory. Different questions, the same obsession.
FUTURE FASHION, 2007 →
“What Does Planting Tomatoes Have to Do With Fashion?” by Natalie Chanin
Planting a garden after coming back to Alabama was more than just a way to celebrate my homecoming; it was also a way to immerse myself into the “domestic arts,” which I prefer to call “living arts.” I realized that here in my community, activities like sewing, gardening, cooking, and quilting have never just been tasks. They’re artful endeavors that allow for independence, a way to take direct responsibility for quality of life and simultaneously, they create a bond between individuals and community, between past and present.
ALABAMA STITCH BOOK, 2008
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
Retired, 2026
LIFE IS IN THE DETAILS, 2008
“Life Is in the Details” by Natalie Chanin
We discovered long ago that how you work is as important as what you produce.
ALABAMA STUDIO STYLE, 2010
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
Retired, 2021
It is a story painted with fabric, shaped by hands, held tight with threads and people.
COMMUNITY, 2010
Essay by Natalie Chanin
I returned to Alabama to work as a designer precisely because my community was uniquely qualified to help me create my products.
My community has such a wealth of knowledge as to the workings of cotton and manufacturing.
ALABAMA STUDIO SEWING + DESIGN, 2012
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
ALABAMA STUDIO SEWING PATTERNS, 2015
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
Retired, 2023
FLAGS OF HOPE, 2016 →
Essay by Natalie Chanin
THE GEOMETRY OF HAND-SEWING, 2017
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
EMBROIDERY: THREADS AND STORIES, 2022
Book by Natalie Chanin
Abrams
I can see the straight line that connects the craft of my professional community of farmers, spinners, knitters, dyers, sewers, designers, and the wearers. This notion of interconnectedness forms the basis of my work.
A LETTER FROM HOME, 2022 →
Essay by Natalie Chanin
The Bitter Southerner
Home is where we build it.
HISTORY, COMMUNITY, AND POWER, WINTER 2025 →
Introduction to Southern Cultures: The Future of Textiles
by Natalie Chanin and Olivia Ware Terenzio
THE STUDIO BOOK, 2027
Book by Natalie Chanin
Abrams
Forthcoming
A living craft survives only when it is practiced.
“What Does Planting Tomatoes Have to Do With Fashion?” by Natalie Chanin
Planting a garden after coming back to Alabama was more than just a way to celebrate my homecoming; it was also a way to immerse myself into the “domestic arts,” which I prefer to call “living arts.” I realized that here in my community, activities like sewing, gardening, cooking, and quilting have never just been tasks. They’re artful endeavors that allow for independence, a way to take direct responsibility for quality of life and simultaneously, they create a bond between individuals and community, between past and present.
ALABAMA STITCH BOOK, 2008
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
Retired, 2026
LIFE IS IN THE DETAILS, 2008
“Life Is in the Details” by Natalie Chanin
We discovered long ago that how you work is as important as what you produce.
ALABAMA STUDIO STYLE, 2010
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
Retired, 2021
It is a story painted with fabric, shaped by hands, held tight with threads and people.
COMMUNITY, 2010
Essay by Natalie Chanin
I returned to Alabama to work as a designer precisely because my community was uniquely qualified to help me create my products.
My community has such a wealth of knowledge as to the workings of cotton and manufacturing.
ALABAMA STUDIO SEWING + DESIGN, 2012
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
ALABAMA STUDIO SEWING PATTERNS, 2015
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
Retired, 2023
FLAGS OF HOPE, 2016 →
Essay by Natalie Chanin
THE GEOMETRY OF HAND-SEWING, 2017
Book by Natalie Chanin
STC Craft / Abrams
EMBROIDERY: THREADS AND STORIES, 2022
Book by Natalie Chanin
Abrams
I can see the straight line that connects the craft of my professional community of farmers, spinners, knitters, dyers, sewers, designers, and the wearers. This notion of interconnectedness forms the basis of my work.
A LETTER FROM HOME, 2022 →
Essay by Natalie Chanin
The Bitter Southerner
Home is where we build it.
HISTORY, COMMUNITY, AND POWER, WINTER 2025 →
Introduction to Southern Cultures: The Future of Textiles
by Natalie Chanin and Olivia Ware Terenzio
THE STUDIO BOOK, 2027
Book by Natalie Chanin
Abrams
Forthcoming
A living craft survives only when it is practiced.
ALABAMA CHANIN →
Design and textile practice, Florence, Alabama, 2006–present.
[Alabama Chanin] is now recognized as a case study in how to do slow fashion responsibly and right...Chanin's commitment—to land and hand, community and history—remains deep and strong.
THE SCHOOL OF MAKING →
Education and craft preservation, 2013-present.
PROJECT THREADWAYS →
501(c)(3) nonprofit and the home of Alabama Chanin and The School of Making
Includes oral history, archival, and public art and humanities work, 2019-present.
THE ARCHIVE →
A year-by-year index of design, production, collaborators, and institutional history, 1980–2024.
SELECTED PRESS
“How a Small Town in Alabama Became a Textile Haven” →
—Rima Suqi, Condé Nast Traveler, 2025
“Why This Fashion Brand Is Becoming a Nonprofit” →
—Sarah Kent, The Business of Fashion, 2023
“The South” →
—Laird Borrelli-Persson, “The United States of Fashion,” Vogue, 2021
“You Can Make It There” →
—Kristi York Wooten, The Bitter Southerner, 2016
“Reviving a Southern Industry, From Cotton Field to Clothing Rack” →
—Debbie Elliott, NPR Morning Edition, 2014
Design and textile practice, Florence, Alabama, 2006–present.
[Alabama Chanin] is now recognized as a case study in how to do slow fashion responsibly and right...Chanin's commitment—to land and hand, community and history—remains deep and strong.
THE SCHOOL OF MAKING →
Education and craft preservation, 2013-present.
PROJECT THREADWAYS →
501(c)(3) nonprofit and the home of Alabama Chanin and The School of Making
Includes oral history, archival, and public art and humanities work, 2019-present.
THE ARCHIVE →
A year-by-year index of design, production, collaborators, and institutional history, 1980–2024.
SELECTED PRESS
“How a Small Town in Alabama Became a Textile Haven” →
—Rima Suqi, Condé Nast Traveler, 2025
“Why This Fashion Brand Is Becoming a Nonprofit” →
—Sarah Kent, The Business of Fashion, 2023
“The South” →
—Laird Borrelli-Persson, “The United States of Fashion,” Vogue, 2021
“You Can Make It There” →
—Kristi York Wooten, The Bitter Southerner, 2016
“Reviving a Southern Industry, From Cotton Field to Clothing Rack” →
—Debbie Elliott, NPR Morning Edition, 2014
COLLABORATIONS
With gratitude to the artists, designers, makers, photographers, writers, chefs, farmers, and friends whose work has entered into conversation with mine over the years, including:
Lola Schnabel (2001–2002), Fernando Sanchez (2002–2003), Tomas Maier (2002–2004), Nicole and Michael Colovos (2003–2004), Studio Job—Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel (2003–2004), Elliott Puckette and Hugo Guinness (2004–2005), Michi Meko (2004–2005), Eva Whitechapel (2004–2005), Rob Ryan (2004–2005), Chi Modu (2005–2006), Angie Mosier, Robert Rausch, and Tom Driver for The Kitchen Project (2005), Father Andrew and Goods of Conscience (2008–2009), Cathy Bailey, Robin Petravic, and Heath Ceramics (2009–2011 and ongoing), Drew Robinson, exhibition for the SFA in collaboration with Landon Nordeman for the BBQ Dress Project (2012), Billy Reid (2012–2014), Patagonia (2014), Stella Ishii and 6397 (2014–2015), Erin Reitz (2016), Sally Fox (2007–2008; 2017), Rinne Allen (2016–2017; 2021), and Diana Weymar and Tiny Pricks Project (2021).
PHOTOGRAPHERS
With gratitude to the photographers who have looked closely at this work and helped document its evolution across decades:
Abraham Rowe, Clemens Kois, Cynthia Connolly, Erin Dailey, Eva Whitechapel, Gili Chen, Jeff Johnson, Les Deux Garçons, Lisa Eisner, Marcio Madeira, Peter Stanglmayr, Reyes Melendez, Rinne Allen, Robert Rausch, Sarah E. Lewis, and Sissi Farassat.
With gratitude to the artists, designers, makers, photographers, writers, chefs, farmers, and friends whose work has entered into conversation with mine over the years, including:
Lola Schnabel (2001–2002), Fernando Sanchez (2002–2003), Tomas Maier (2002–2004), Nicole and Michael Colovos (2003–2004), Studio Job—Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel (2003–2004), Elliott Puckette and Hugo Guinness (2004–2005), Michi Meko (2004–2005), Eva Whitechapel (2004–2005), Rob Ryan (2004–2005), Chi Modu (2005–2006), Angie Mosier, Robert Rausch, and Tom Driver for The Kitchen Project (2005), Father Andrew and Goods of Conscience (2008–2009), Cathy Bailey, Robin Petravic, and Heath Ceramics (2009–2011 and ongoing), Drew Robinson, exhibition for the SFA in collaboration with Landon Nordeman for the BBQ Dress Project (2012), Billy Reid (2012–2014), Patagonia (2014), Stella Ishii and 6397 (2014–2015), Erin Reitz (2016), Sally Fox (2007–2008; 2017), Rinne Allen (2016–2017; 2021), and Diana Weymar and Tiny Pricks Project (2021).
PHOTOGRAPHERS
With gratitude to the photographers who have looked closely at this work and helped document its evolution across decades:
Abraham Rowe, Clemens Kois, Cynthia Connolly, Erin Dailey, Eva Whitechapel, Gili Chen, Jeff Johnson, Les Deux Garçons, Lisa Eisner, Marcio Madeira, Peter Stanglmayr, Reyes Melendez, Rinne Allen, Robert Rausch, Sarah E. Lewis, and Sissi Farassat.
ABOUT
Natalie Chanin is an artist, designer, author, and researcher whose work explores encounter through material, labor, memory, and place. For more than twenty-six years, her practice has been centered in Florence, Alabama, and The Shoals, where she grew up and where her most significant work has emerged.
After studying Environmental Design at North Carolina State University and working for more than a decade in styling, art direction, film, design, and writing, Chanin began The Self-Portrait Project in New York City in 2000. Living at the Hotel Chelsea, she made and wore a hand-sewn T-shirt each day, documenting the practice in automated photo booths and placing small photographic stickers throughout the city. The work led her home to Alabama, where she created Project Alabama, a collaborative body of hand-sewn garments developed alongside local women and documented in the film Stitch.
That encounter became the foundation for an ongoing investigation into making in place: the relationships among handwork and labor, material and memory, design and community, local economies and global systems. The work evolved through Alabama Chanin, The School of Making, writing, film, installation, oral history, and collaborative projects including The Cotton Project, which expanded Chanin’s inquiry from cloth into land, agriculture, and the systems surrounding cotton.
In 2019, she founded Project Threadways to deepen the material culture, oral history, archival, and public humanities work that had become inseparable from the artistic practice.
Her current project, Mapping Cotton: Land, Labor, and the Making of America, extends this decades-long inquiry into the landscape itself. Through textiles, photography, drawing, mapping, archival research, and installation, the work examines how people, materials, labor, and place shape one another.
What began with the body and cloth has become a way of reading the landscape.
After studying Environmental Design at North Carolina State University and working for more than a decade in styling, art direction, film, design, and writing, Chanin began The Self-Portrait Project in New York City in 2000. Living at the Hotel Chelsea, she made and wore a hand-sewn T-shirt each day, documenting the practice in automated photo booths and placing small photographic stickers throughout the city. The work led her home to Alabama, where she created Project Alabama, a collaborative body of hand-sewn garments developed alongside local women and documented in the film Stitch.
That encounter became the foundation for an ongoing investigation into making in place: the relationships among handwork and labor, material and memory, design and community, local economies and global systems. The work evolved through Alabama Chanin, The School of Making, writing, film, installation, oral history, and collaborative projects including The Cotton Project, which expanded Chanin’s inquiry from cloth into land, agriculture, and the systems surrounding cotton.
In 2019, she founded Project Threadways to deepen the material culture, oral history, archival, and public humanities work that had become inseparable from the artistic practice.
Her current project, Mapping Cotton: Land, Labor, and the Making of America, extends this decades-long inquiry into the landscape itself. Through textiles, photography, drawing, mapping, archival research, and installation, the work examines how people, materials, labor, and place shape one another.
What began with the body and cloth has become a way of reading the landscape.
Inquiries: thelab@projectthreadways.org
NATALIE CHANIN
Artist, designer, author, and researcher
Florence, Alabama
Artist, designer, author, and researcher
Florence, Alabama