In Episode 59 of the Close Knit Podcast, I spoke to Carolina Jimenez. carolina is a mexican-american textile artist and designer living in brooklyn. she is currently the creative director at caroline z hurley and also maintains an art practice. she makes monuments - memory signifiers, vessels into which the past is poured, molded, or reshaped (woven, unraveled, or stretched). these monuments reference the body-my body and yours-they speak to the magnificence of our daily lived experience and the monumentality of the mundane. Carolina and I cover a whole range of things you might expect in a conversation in 2020 - anxiety and learning to name it as such, voting (and the whole host of barriers that keep folks from voting or having information to vote), and learning to quiet the voice that tells you you’re “behind” in your career of life path. Carolina remembers learning to embroider as a child from her grandmother and having an overall interest in craft and keeping her hands busy. She also decided at an early age that architecture would be her path - until she took a weaving studio class in college and immediately felt its magic. She went on to study a masters program in textiles as RISD, and began working for Caroline Z Hurley, all while keeping her own textile practice going. We discuss the ways that colleges can be a source of a network, and also how we aim to practice ‘networking’ in a less extractive way than the term can imply. We both have noticed mutual aid networks growing this year and are excited by the opportunity to get involved at the local scale in our communities. Carolina and I tie up our conversation with a bit of conjecture into Instagram culture and how we might subvert the influencer culture in our own ways of sharing our process & practice. She speaks to her current studio practice and the garments she is collaborating with Nayila Wright to bring it to life.