(tranquil music) - I work with wire mesh.

I work with natural fibers.

You give me anything that I can stitch, anything that I can weave, that's usually what I like to work with.

My name is Kristi Swee Kuder, and I am a fiber artist.

(tranquil music continues) My artistic journey has always been related to fiber.

I started out with fiber as a child growing up in Breckenridge.

My mother and dad had a department store there.

In the department store was everything a town could have, including a fabric and notions department.

So my mother would always bring home anything that she could knit, anything that she could sew.

I wanted to say something, but I really didn't know what I wanted to say until my family was hit with a loved one with mental illness.

My son was diagnosed with schizophrenia in I think it was 2008.

And it was that where I found my voice.

That was where it took my work from being, oh, let's play with this, let's try that, let's see what I can make with this, to the point where I wanted to say something about what was happening to me personally.

And I think as a result of that personal engagement and impact, it elevated my work.

It brought my work to another level.

He's been homeless.

He's been a homeless person.

We've experienced years of not knowing whether he's alive.

These experiences are very much a part of a lot of people's lives, I'm finding out as I share my work.

I hear from others who are saying something that is also very, very much in the same vein as what I'm going through.

(tranquil music continues) And it was at that point I realized I needed to do something more.

And it was wire mesh that spoke to me.

Wire mesh was a fiber I could stitch with, I could weave, I could deconstruct, I could tear into.

It expressed so many things that I was feeling.

I buy it in huge, big rolls that are maybe six feet wide and then, I don't know, how many yards long.

I cut it down to whatever size I want to work with.

Some of my pieces suspend from the ceiling and are big, I call them veils.

They drape down.

So I'm working on a very large scale, six feet by six feet wide.

Other pieces are much smaller.

(torch hissing) I mark it with a torch.

I mark it with usually a cooking torch.

And the heat causes the wire mesh to change colors.

I love some of the colors that I get from it.

It gives me some gem tones, deep blues, copper, golds.

That carries the concept for me of history, the past, and the present.

(gentle music) I usually have maybe two exhibitions a year that I work towards.

The installation that I feel is the most powerful one is called "As I Sit, I Knit."

It is made up of a chair with knitting needles and yards and yards of knitted wire.

Along with that are seven veils that have been marked with logic symbols.

Those logic symbols are scattered throughout the veils.

The logic symbols don't add up.

The equations don't make any sense.

When you deal with the unknown, particularly with mental illness, you have no logic to work with.

When there is no logic, there is no way to solve your problems.

(light music) I'm very connected to this part of the state.

I grew up in Breckenridge.

My family would pack up the car after school was out, bring the kids out here.

We would spend the summer out here, pack up the car, go back to school in the fall.

So I had my summer friends.

I think it was just an idyllic way to grow up.

I think the landscape here is important to me, the water and the hills.

It's a beautiful part of the state.

Well, right now I'm starting a new project, and it is taking willow to build a shelter.

For me, again, it comes back to my desire to talk about mental illness, which leads into homelessness.

Homelessness, unsheltered, I want to create something that is going to be a shelter.

And very often, that is a place where the homeless end up is sheltered within nature.

The presence and the absence is a big message that goes through a lot of my work.

There's a term for it called ambiguous loss.

Ambiguous loss can happen for people who have gone through a divorce, where there's the presence and absence, a child is dealing with that, or where a person is dealing with dementia or Alzheimer's, a loved one has that.

I have found it to be very therapeutic.

Art is, for everyone, whether you're dealing with a major concern or just enjoying life, you still need art or some form of creative process to feel human, to be alive, to have that opportunity to come up with something that is yourself.

I think that what really drives my work mostly is the concept, the desire to share some message or some ideas that I have in my head that I want other people to hear and understand.

(light music continues) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.