Photo by Emma Quirk '26. Biery's art project, "Devotion," was installed in the Williston Memorial Library atrium on April 20.
By Emma Quirk ’26
Staff Writer
Karla Biery ’23, a critical social thought major and Spanish minor, is always thinking about “how our communities are built … and the ways that they’re split up.” Throughout her three years at Mount Holyoke, Biery has taken a combination of dance, art, religion and Spanish courses, eventually deciding to major in CST with a focus on how people connect with one another, as well as what divides them.
All CST majors must complete a capstone project, which is “a thesis, research paper, performance or multimedia project that serves as a culminating intellectual experience of a self-designed course of study,” according to the CST department page. Biery’s capstone is a “collaborative crochet project” and an installation spanning multiple walls entitled “Devotion.” It will be displayed in the Williston Library Atrium, with the installation starting on April 20, and the opening event occurring on April 28 from four to six p.m.
According to Biery, “Devotion” is the result of “trying to represent the feeling of connection between people … wanting to make something visible.”
“I started just by painting all these patterns, where there’s these intersecting parts and that kind of represents the [interconnected] web of relationships. But it was kind of hard just to do it on canvas because you’re constricted to four sides, but then with crochet, you can just make it as big as possible. And now it’s 30 feet long,” Biery said.
Biery started calling this project “Devotion” when it was still only on canvas because they painted the same pattern on it every day. “It was kind of like a ritual of painting. Which brought me back to the whole religion [idea], so I was like, I’m very devoted to this and devoted to making these connections,” Biery said.
Adrienne Maree Brown’s “Emergent Strategy,” in which Brown discusses the idea that “small scale interactions create large scale changes,” inspired Biery. In this project, Biery focused on these interactions and small but powerful ways to be devoted to, and engage with your community.
“Devotion is being devoted to each other and actually building something together instead of tearing each other apart … whether that means showing up once a week to crochet and knit with your friends or making dinner together,” Biery explained.
The original inspiration for the concept of the project came to Biery during the pandemic. After working on a farm in Wisconsin with a friend’s mom as a way to get out of the house, Biery returned home to Chicago. Shortly after, Biery overheard people talking outside the window about the same small town they had gone to in Wisconsin.
“[I realized] if I shouted out the window, I could have this connection with these people. And that’s what originally sparked this thing of [how] there are literally millions of ways that people are connected to each other. But we never get to see that or even really feel that without actually talking,” Biery said.
At this point, Biery began focusing on the notion of patterns. As a child, her house had radiator covers that have an “optical illusion looking star pattern.” “If you focus on one point of it, you can see all the individual stars. But then if you relax your eyes … they look like they’re all moving,” Biery said. “[I thought] you can focus on individual parts of a community, like one person, but then when you look out, the whole image or the whole community becomes something different and more impactful.”
Biery felt that transitioning to crochet as a medium was a perfect addition to this metaphor of patterns and community building, because a fiber artist physically ties together the yarn, “building something with your hands that you can see grow … and if you miss a stitch … there’s a hole.” At Mount Holyoke, Biery has noticed the effects of divisiveness and wanted to do something to combat it. Devotion is a metaphor for community building and “the ways that we can connect with each other and grow with each other,” Biery said.
Biery made numerous connections with the College’s community throughout the process of brainstorming and creating Devotion. In Professor Ren-Yo Hwang’s Foundations in CST course they did a collaborative project with Solei Doering ’24. The two students crocheted together and discussed decolonization, and left with a physical embodiment of their community building. Biery cites Doering as their first collaborator, and Hwang as being their advisor for the capstone project.
Last summer Biery used Lynk funding to work at Olympia Gallery in New York City. Ali Rossi ’15, runs Olympia, a cooperative gallery. Biery was inspired by the way Rossi fosters “community building through art,” and the fact that Rossi started Olympia because of a project they worked on at MHC.
Major assistance with the physical aspect of the project came from Knit Happens, a fiber arts club on campus. At the first meeting this year, Biery walked around the room and asked who would be interested in being a part of this project, and many members of Knit Happens donated crochet and knit projects for Biery to use in Devotion. During this time, Biery was also in a capstone seminar with Gender Studies Assistant Professor Sarah Stefana Smith, who helped with the theorizing factor of the project.
Biery credited the Fimbel Maker and Innovation Lab with allowing her to complete this project. They attended a “Stitch and Bitch” event hosted by Fimbel where Shani Mensing ’15 — a design mentor and technical lead at Fimbel — told Biery to do a Fimbel Lab independent study. Through this independent study, Biery was given a grant to complete the project, space to store it and mentors to help them. Fimbel also connected Biery with the Carpentry Team, a part of Facilities Management, to complete and install Devotion.
As this is Biery’s last year at Mount Holyoke, Biery has started planning out the next phase of their life. This summer, Biery is interning as a design fabricator for a women-led art installation and fabrication design company.
Biery is this year’s Mount Holyoke recipient of the Davis Peace Project scholarship, a grant that allows students to design and engage in a project over a summer that addresses the root causes of conflict in a community and promotes peace. Through the Davis Peace Project, Biery is going to work at a youth art and music summer camp. It is usually hosted in New York, but this year “we were invited to go by this amazing artist in Loíza, [Puerto Rico],” Biery said. After this, Biery is applying for a Fulbright Scholarship, and hope to work with a crochet artist who makes “installations about relationships.”
Biery has a few words of advice for underclassmen. The first: get involved and “go to the Fimbel Lab right now. Go there, talk to somebody and learn how to use some machine because there are not many places where that type of equipment is available.” In addition, if one feels lonely or disconnected, Biery suggests to “go to the clubs and go to events, there [are] so many amazing speakers that come to the Five Colleges, even just to Mount Holyoke, I have learned so much about life [and] who I am just by attending these events.”
The second, which is inspired by a guest speaker: “It’s important to have dignity and not just confidence … it’s knowing that you have self-worth beyond what anybody else [gives] to you.” Biery attended an Interfaith Lunch where Phakchok Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher and spiritual leader, spoke about this idea of dignity, and it really resonated. Rinpoche explores these ideas in a book he co-wrote with Sophie Wu, titled “Awakening Dignity: A Guide to Living a Life of Deep Fulfillment.”
Biery’s third piece of advice is to take classes that you’re excited about, and “know that you have worth and [that] your ideas are valuable and you don’t have to be anybody that you don’t want to be” while pursuing what you’re drawn to.
The final piece of advice: “Extend generosity and kindness to yourself and others … love yourself and love the people around you. Because this is a special place to be.”