- [Announcer] Making is presented by the Coal Yard Cafe in Ithaca, New York.

(rousing music) (tranquil music) - Walking into a room of my art is like a cotton candy wonderland of lights, and darks, and pinks, and a little bit of blue, and it's floating text.

It's very soft.

So it's cotton fabric, often either stuffed or backed with muslin, which is very similar to a stuffed animal, or maybe a quilt.

And it's usually suspended from a ceiling, off the wall, in space, so that you can walk around it or under it, like sentences in the air.

I'm Anna Warfield, and I am a soft sculptor and a poet.

The work is pretty intentionally confrontational, because I was socialized in a way, like I think a lot of us are, a lot of femme bodies are socialized to feel that you need to be this soft, placid, non-confrontational being in space, and that speaking up for yourself makes you more of a problem.

I wanted to take that idea head on and use these associations with light soft colors like pinks and soft baby blues and upend it, use it as an entry point for people to be confronted, to have their worldview challenged.

The poems that I write, I knew as I was writing them and have been writing them, that they were going to be tough to digest.

I had some pretty tough things that I wanted to be able to process, even if just for myself, but then not wanting it to be so literal when I'm putting it into the world.

So using the soft pink as an entry point for the surprise confrontation that's about to happen, and then they go deeper and it's something that they weren't quite expecting, and it's a bit more aggressive.

I think the language in the poems, it's evolved over time, but usually there's a relationship to the body.

I've been forced to hyper fixate on my own body.

I've been forced to think about it all the time, and the way it's presented, and the way it's being received, and what I've done with my body and space, and that level of magnified, intense focus on that, I want other people to kind of feel as well, referencing oral fixation and talking about the mouth.

Making people very aware, viscerally aware of their own bodies is a part of it.

And then also, what does a body do?

And then paralleling that to like other larger ideas.

And for talking about being softer, that can mean so many different things.

And interest in specific words too, and how they've been morphed, utilized, sexualized over time.

And the difference between me saying certain words versus a man saying certain words has always been of interest to me.

So for a while, I was interested in finding categories, and understanding myself and my position and the world based on the categories that were offered and socialized to understand.

And then at the same time, I was fighting this not loving being called a feminist, and not loving getting the thread picked up, oh, this is what it means to be a woman, a woman must work with fibers, but also knowing that I'm elevating that language of making, which is women's work, working with fabric, as a good thing, elevating that, but then also having to grapple with, I don't think that that is the exact perfect thing to define me and who I am, and that this is now becoming how people see and interpret me, which ultimately brought me to wanting to confuse people with the work and not give definitive answers, and make it harder and harder for people to understand what it is that I'm saying working in a space that is accessible, inviting, visually compelling, but then also a little bit aggravating.

There's this sort of gendered tension within fiber arts and fabric pieces where many people seem to think that although we're in a gallery or a museum setting, we're looking at fabric so we can touch it.

So talking about sexuality, gender identity, and bodies, often from the perspective of a femme individual, the idea of consent pretty organically comes up in violation, and many of my pieces have been handled pretty aggressively, pretty violently in museum and gallery context, and it's just things playing out kind of grossly and perfectly the way that they should be to make the points that I'm trying to make.

In 2025, I was invited to be the Rockwell Museum's anti-Gravity artist, which is a specific project that the Rockwell Museum has with a few different parts.

One part is, I am invited to make a site specific installation that will be on view at the Rockwell Museum for an entire year.

So, throughout 2025, and then a little bit into 2026.

That piece is site specific.

So I'm thinking about their architecture, the place, how people will see it from various angles, and making the work in response to that.

Part two is, I bring the artwork to the Rockwell for a week, where they install the work.

I give them instructions and kind of check in with them, but they handle the install.

While that installation is taking place, they have a partnership with the Corning Museum of Glass, which is very close by to them, and I get to go over and have a residency for a week with the corny Museum of Glass.

So, what that looks like is, on top of creating this work for the Rockwell, I spent six months in prep, talking to professional gaffers at the Corny Museum of Glass, preparing for this week that we would work really intensely to see what my art would look like in glass.

We can take any direction we want.

It can be trying to replicate my work in glass, or it can be a new direction.

But I get to work with professionals in the glass making sphere to create objects in glass, and they're really incredible.

It's a once in a lifetime experience for sure.

In my case, I wouldn't have touched glass in this way if I hadn't been invited to and had this opportunity.

And when I have people interacting with or just viewing my work, I am mostly interested in them coming away confused, or possibly with more questions than answers very on purpose.

Because if you are sitting with art over a period of time, that means it's resonated or caused you to think differently about the world, and I think that's really powerful, not just the 10 second you spend, if you're lucky, I'm lucky, in front of the piece, but that it lingers with you for longer.

That's what I'm hoping for.

- [Announcer] Making is made possible with support from the Coal Yard Cafe in Ithaca, New York, from Beer Properties, and from viewers like you.