Junior Jennilee Joslyn prides herself on her ability to express herself and bring joy to others through her art. Joslyn began her exploration of fiber art in middle school. She picked up crochet first. She knew she would be moving to a new school, and she was determined to churn out a parting gift for each of her friends in turn.

Joslyn would continue to pursue fiber art years later, going on to learn sewing and hand embroidery as well. While she obviously appreciates the craft, her reason for pursuing it is a selfless one. She creates for others, she loves the feeling she’s left with from “ putting a lot of time and thought into something for someone else.”

A lot of her inspiration comes from other artists like Ai Yazawa, the famous manga artist and illustrator, despite working in very different mediums. Joslyn admires the depth of Yazawa’s work. She also finds herself particularly inspired by the genre of K-pop. Music, Joslyn has found, makes a great difference in her productivity. It helps her focus and pay closer attention to the details. In addition to K-pop, Joslyn is also quite fond of RnB music. “Daniel Ceasar is always my go to to put on when I need to lock-in,” said Joslyn.

In a field as time-consuming as fiber art, burn out is incredibly prevalent, one way that Joslyn keeps motivated is by carving out time for her girlfriend, Autumn. Her girlfriend gives her a reason to improve herself and encourages her on her journey to doing so.

Joslyn was born in Japan, but moved to the states soon after. She was only a year old. She would continue to move from place to place and attend ten different schools. Currently, she lives with her parents, grandma, older sibling, and three pets. The most ambitious project she has taken on, is one that she is still working on even now, which combines both crochet and embroidery. The end goal is a blanket made of crocheted records with hand-stitched album titles. Joslyn feels most like herself when she’s creating freely. She continues to learn and grow in her techniques and that improvement truly shows in her work. Joslyn’s advice for aspiring fiber artists is “-have lots of patience because it is definitely going to be challenging, but it’s sure worth it!”