Brittle Wood

In Meadowland, Chanee Vijay turns her attention to the mutable terrain of the Sonoma County coast, translating its shifting hues and layered histories into thirteen abstract textile collages. She constructs surfaces that echo coastal meadows shaped as much by centuries of human use as by seasonal light. The compositions hold a quiet tension between past and present: ranch lands and sheep‑grazed fields, Indigenous histories, and the remnants of the nineteenth‑century mill era. Working in abstraction, Vijay allows the hemp ground and its layered stitchwork to read as visual sediment - accumulated time made tactile.

Vijay deepens this dialogue with place through material choices that serve as both gesture and record. Wool yarn sourced from Sonoma County sheep appears as deliberate interruption, while dyed hemp threads, stitched in raw seams, evoke the labor, resourcefulness, and endurance of earlier coastal communities. The resulting works feel excavated rather than constructed, as if the meadow itself had offered up its memory in fiber.