Diploneis Veil

2023, 60x27 inches, hand-crocheted filet lace

A piece about smallness, vastness, community and a bit of futility, Diploneis Veil portrays a single diatom as a stand in for an entire colony of diatoms. Diatoms often become visible to the bare human eye only when present in such large quantities, a clump of algae in water. As the maker of the piece crocheting over the course of months, the entire image didn’t begin to be clear to me until the halfway mark. Stitches meant nothing until more and more were built up row after row. The value of repetition, in this case building a community or colony, allows for something to truly be seen as worth investigating where it might not have been noticed before.