2025–2026: Rowan Perkins ’25
This year’s President’s Award for Public Art selection, A River to the Sky, honors the craftsmanship and traditions passed down through the generations in a striking 23-foot-tall, crocheted tapestry.
“I strive to spark conversations that challenge the societal impact of convenience and advocate for a more sustainable, interconnected future,” says Perkins.
Sculpture Comes Full-Circle
Growing up in rural Massachusetts, sculptor Rowan Perkins ’25 (Sculpture) watched her grandmother transform raw materials into handmade objects, using yarn she spun with fibers gathered from the sheep, rabbits, and goats she raised. The process instilled in her a deep respect for sustainability, craftsmanship, and the beauty of the natural world. Through sculpture, she explores how community and the cycles of renewal connect us all.
The recipient of the 2025-26 President’s Award for Public Art on campus, Perkins channeled that inspiration into a striking crocheted tapestry: a sprawling, color-blocked landscape representing rolling hills, bodies of water, forests, and the sky.
Cooking, Chemistry, and Crochet
Perkins extracted nearly all of her natural yarn dyes by simmering locally sourced indigenous plants foraged from the Purchase campus, including goldenrod, iris, marigold, cattail leaves, lichen, and dried wood.
“Each plant offers a wide range of colors, typically greens, yellows, and browns depending on the mordant used,” says Perkins.
She uses iron to darken some colors, and aluminum triformate as a mordant, binding the dye to the yarn.
No stranger to fiber arts, Perkins created a dramatic site-specific crochet net during her semester abroad at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts in 2023–24. A River to the Sky is several times that size, which required assistance for dying and crocheting.
“I wanted to make the experience communal and incorporate the hearts and hands of other people.”
Perkins hopes visitors take away an appreciation for craft and nature.
“I hope they will see the time and labor spent in creating something made entirely from natural materials and by hand. The imagery, being of a landscape—a natural place—is important because it depicts somewhere the materials could have come from. It’s a full circle project.”
A River to the Sky is on view in the lobby of the Center for Media, Film, and Theater.