Jessie Mordine Young (b. England, 1993) is a Brooklyn-based artist who researches, writes about, curates, creates, and teaches textile art. Her practice is deeply rooted in material exploration, memory, and an intuitive relationship with color and texture. In one of her more recent bodies of work, she embarked on a daily practice of creating small woven artworks, which she refers to as “woven drawings” or “thread sketches.” These intimate, handwoven pieces serve as visual journals—marking fleeting moments through color, gesture, and materiality. She incorporates found materials—dried flowers, shells, beads, and stones—into the surface of her weavings, transforming each piece into a tactile collage that blurs the line between textile and sculpture.

The small scale of these works references portraiture, inviting an intimate dialogue between the viewer and the woven form. Each piece is a reflection of her evolving relationship with nature, where color and texture become tangible references to memory. Mordine Young’s iterative process underscores her belief in intuition as a guiding force—one creative impulse leading seamlessly to another, ultimately forming a cohesive whole. 

Jessie Mordine Young is a graduate (2021) from the Masters Program in the History of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. She received her BFA in 2015 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with a dual degree in Art History and Studio Art in Fiber and Material Studies. She is a part-time lecturer/faculty at Parsons School of Design of The New School in NYC.

Her artwork has been exhibited internationally including Amelie Maison D’Art, Paris, France, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, New Jersey, and The Invisible Dog Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. She has been able to share her practice in publications like Maake Magazine and the Create! Magazine’s Alchemy issue, she has also been interviewed such as Botanical Colors' Feedback Friday. She has collaborated with a diverse range of creative spaces and is a former resident of the Texere Textile Residency and Textilmiðstöð Iceland.

—————————————

“When I approach other textile-based artwork as a weaver, textile scholar, educator, and community creator there is an additional layer of intimacy and empathy that I bring to the conversation. Textile tools and processes transmit experience, skill, and knowledge. A maker must have an intimate and comprehensive understanding of the medium in order to implement these things. The textiles, woven by an artist with these acquired abilities, then become carriers of empathy, memory, and lived experience. Textiles are evidence of humanity.”

-Jessie Mordine Young