This exchange began in Mallorca, during XTANT, where we spent several days surrounded by artists, textile makers and craftspeople from around the world.

Beyond the beautiful objects and garments, what stayed with us were the conversations: reflections on materials, time, beauty, sustainability, memory and the quiet rituals that shape creative work.

Community and exchange have always been an essential part of ound. Through travels, collaborations and long-distance friendships, we have built meaningful relationships with makers, artisans and designers from different cultures and places. These encounters continually nourish our practice and expand the way we think about contemporary making.

Wanting to continue those conversations beyond the festival, we invited four women whose work we deeply admire to answer a few simple questions about their practice, inspirations and relationship with making. Although each comes from a different place and practice, they share a thoughtful and deeply rooted approach to making, one that values time, knowledge passed between generations and a close relationship with the materials they work with.

Surzhana Radnaeva (Traditional Futures)

What is the first material you remember loving?
The first material I remember loving was paper. As a child, I collected all kinds of it: candy wrappers, packaging, magazines, colored papers, and scraps of unknown origin. It was not necessarily about natural fibers or craftsmanship at that time. I was fascinated by the diversity of textures, colors, translucencies, sounds, and possibilities that paper offered. I would carefully keep and organize my collection, always looking for new pieces to add to it. Looking back, I think this fascination shaped the way I work today. Paper taught me that even the most ordinary material can contain endless stories, transformations, and worlds to explore.

What does care mean in your work?
For me, care is about building relationships with materials. Through my work with paper, mushrooms, bioplastics, and other bio-based materials, I try to encourage people to understand that each material has its own needs, behaviors, and ways of being cared for.

Today, we are surrounded by highly convenient materials, many of them synthetic, that require very little attention from us. We have become accustomed to treating all materials in the same way: using them quickly, washing them in machines, replacing them when they wear out. But many natural materials come with their own instructions. They ask for different forms of maintenance, attention, and respect, and I believe this is completely normal.

“The first material I remember loving was paper. As a child, I collected all kinds of it: candy wrappers, packaging, magazines, colored papers, and scraps of unknown origin.”  - Surzhana Radnaeva

Care is also about slowing down. We have become very efficient at saving time, yet we rarely ask ourselves what we do with all the time we save. In the past, many everyday activities involved moments of attention and contemplation. I'm not suggesting that we should abandon washing machines or other useful technologies. Rather, I believe we can use them wisely while still maintaining meaningful relationships with the materials we live with. Caring for a material can become a small ritual, a moment of connection, and a reminder that the things around us are not simply disposable objects.

What’s been inspiring you lately?
Lately, I have been inspired by conversations between materials. Much of my recent work has focused on paper, but increasingly I have become interested in what happens when paper meets other materials such as glass, metal, or wood.

I have started a number of collaborations with makers and craftspeople working in these different fields. In a way, I arrive as a representative of paper, bringing it into dialogue with other material worlds. I am fascinated by the tensions, complementarities, and unexpected relationships that emerge when materials with different histories, properties, and traditions encounter one another.

These exchanges have made me think less about individual materials and more about connection, collaboration, and coexistence. They remind me that materials, like people, can enter into conversation and create something neither could achieve alone.

Vita Ivici

Is there a plant you feel especially connected to? Why?
I have a selection of favourite plants, and as the seasons change, I always look forward to seeing them bloom. Among them, flax is the plant I feel most connected to. I work with it in my growing linen project and, in a way, it has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I come from a region in Slovenia that is historically connected to handwoven linen cloth and even named after linen cloth.

Is there a smell that brings you back to your practice?
The smell of spring, when nature begins to awaken again.

What does sustainability mean to you, in practice?
To me, sustainability in practice means living that way as naturally as possible, without making special statements about it. It is simply part of my everyday life and also an essential part of my creative work.

Kristina Foley (Foods Shelter Clothing)

What is your first memory related to wool?
I was homeschooled in a rural area following the Waldorf curriculum and my mother taught us how to sew felt gnomes, and stuff them with local carded wool. In some of my favorite childhood photos from that time, my sister and I are bundled up in wool sweaters, mittens and hats.

What does time and care mean in your creative process?
I feel like my creative process is moving in the right direction when I lose track of time entirely and enter into a flow state. Feltmaking is an embodied work that calls on the knowledge and sensitivity in your hands. I touch and pull the soft combed wool repeatedly with both hands as I lay it out and create a cloud-like ‘canvas’. I walk and crouch over the fluffy wool as I design on it with textural raw locks.

I add warm water and soap and I use my whole body to agitate and transform the wool fibers into a strong, felted textile. The whole process may take several days as I carefully listen to the fiber and let it guide me into its final form. My work is to keep the wild spirit of the materials as I engage with them and create something new.

“I feel like my creative process is moving in the right direction when I lose track of time entirely and enter into a flow state.” - Kristina Foley 

Is there a season of the year you feel especially connected to? Why?
Spring is my favorite season. I associate it with the first daffodils blooming at my childhood home, the landscape turning from bare to green, wild asparagus & mushrooms, bird song, lambs and a desire to move and explore as my body wakes up from Winter.

Andrea Viêntëc

What aspect of your childhood is reflected in your work today?
Both of my grandmothers were master seamstresses, and I was always fascinated by their skill in sewing and making clothes.

On the other hand, and this is something I hadn't really thought about before, I remember hiding little treasures as a child, anticipating the excitement of finding them again. I've carried that habit into parts of my practice and the way I create. I leave notes on the last pages of my notebooks, to be read only once I reach the end of a sketchbook, and I hide small details or messages inside hats for the person wearing them to discover.

“Experimentation is a fundamental part of my creative process. Play introduces an element of risk and detachment that allows the finished piece to become a souvenir of the practice itself.” - Andrea Viêntëc

What do imagination and experimentation mean in your work?
Experimentation is a fundamental part of my creative process. Play introduces an element of risk and detachment that allows the finished piece to become a souvenir of the practice itself. It's a moment when the process carries as much weight, or even more, than the final work.

What are you currently obsessed with?
I'm drawn to nostalgic aesthetics, monochromatic palettes with subtle shifts in texture, and the quiet transformations that appear unexpectedly in the spaces around us.

Aina Slizz

What does time mean in your work?
There is something that I have been realizing regarding the perception of time. I work during the summer months in high mountain cabins, following the clock of sunlight, without access to the common electrical grid, with solar panels and a very low energy supply. All the activities I carry out during those months are free of the use of petrol and luxuries, for example: my cabin does not have a bathroom or a shower, and sometimes I do not have a refrigerator. So when I have to shower, it's usually something I have to plan for, because it takes longer than in a regular house.

As a shepherdess, I live in a different rhythm. The slowness of my work allows me to dedicate a lot of time to getting to know who I am, developing personal interests, continuing to learn about biology, ecology, veterinary medicine, ethology, language, dog training, etc. The perception of time is circular and is very much linked to the annual seasons and their linked activities.

What texture reminds you of home/your childhood? What is a material you keep coming back to, and why?
The smell of lanolin and wet wool. Wherever I work, sheep are there, so wherever I can call a place home -even temporary- smells of sheep and wool. 

“There is something about being a shepherdess that belongs not just to me but to generations of other beings who have done the same thing before me. This is more than a job, it' s a meaningful way of life.” - Aina Slizz

What do you love most about what you do?
One of the things I value most in shepherding is the trusting relationships I establish with different animals. For me that is a form of magic that exists in my life, the fact that free animals decide every night to sleep again under my protection. Relationships with other-than-human beings are often less complex than human interactions. I experience wonderful moments of affection with the sheep and the dogs, and beautiful landscapes accompany me every time the sun rises and sets.

Also for me it is a reciprocal way of living with the elements and animal beings, in relationships of interdependence that can be very rich in understanding what the role of humanity is on earth, which is to be guardians of biodiversity through our actions. For me, as humans we have the responsibility of managing the environment, we have been Guardians of the territory for millennia, increasing the biodiversity and richness of these shaped environments, and we have favoured the coexistence of many species around us. In all continents there is evidence of this when we observe native people and their practices.