Hillary Waters Fayle is a Virginia-based textile artist known for her delicate botanical constructs. Working with found leaves and rudimentary tools – needle and thread, and Exacto knives – Fayle creates fragile, elegant assemblages that change the way we view the familiar.
Like a human leaf miner, Fayle edits or enhances the original forms of leaves. She painstakingly removes tiny sections of a leaf or embroiders elaborate patterns and pathways on the leaf’s surface. Her embroidery techniques are influenced by global textile traditions that have been passed down through the centuries. This precise craftsmanship weaves together the natural with the handmade.
Fayle works with both fresh and dried, pressed leaves and has different techniques for each. For some fragile leaves, she uses the smallest needle she can find to pierce the leaf surface, and certain stitch techniques work better for some leaves than others. Brittleness, color shifts, and other ways the pieces react to the environment over time are part of the artist’s intent: to express the tenuous fragility and infinite complexity of the natural world.
Fayle’s work is a celebration of what can be done when we are gentle, quiet, and act with care. In a commitment to protect the natural world, she strives for zero waste from her practice and avoids any disruption to living plants. Her process is a meditation on love of the earth with a focus on the transience and impermanence of life.
Hillary Waters Fayle teaches Craft and Materials Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and beyond, and is held in many public and private collections including Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York. A public installation in collaboration with Albright-Knox Art Gallery can be seen year-round in Buffalo. Her work is also highlighted in the New York Botanical Garden’s 2021–2022 education catalog. You may contact the artist through her website.