Tea Spotlight: Erika Hibbert

The rich history of tea has contributed to the world socially, economically, and culturally for thousands of years.  As such, it has also inspired many artists.  One of them is visual artist, Erika Hibbert, currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. 

In 2004, Hibbert began working on a series based around tea, utilizing tea bags and other tea related items as main artistic materials.

A Cup of Tea Will Wake You Up. Materials: oils and gold leaf on teabags. 2006.

"The teabag works started as a simple act of collecting the leftovers of my daily cups of rooibos tea. I was not considering making anything out of the bags at first, but as the collection grew I became more and more interested in them.​"

Teabag Dress. Materials: teabags, netting. 2008.

"I started actively making with the bags when I began stitching bags together. I stitched in various ways – adding to the piles and still not sure of to what end I was doing it. Then I started placing small personal objects into the empty bags. The objects were all simple and important things from our life. I stitched the bags shut, enclosing the objects in bags that hid them from the present. I made the objects into secrets about our past. Later, when I had started drawing and painting again, I took the objects out of the bags and painted them before replacing them into bags once again."

Fragments (detail). Materials: watercolor and found objects. 2006.

Teabag Books (detail). 2005.

Source:  ​https://erikahibbert.com/section/182939-Tea-Series.html