Beads

Babs Weiss

Babs Weiss created Beads during a one-off community workshop focused on processing grief through comic-making. In early 2022, Weiss’s mother was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease which suddenly and dramatically changed her quality of life. With varying degrees of consciousness and ability, she stayed in Maryland hospitals and rehabilitation clinics for eight months.

During this time, Weiss would travel from Pennsylvania to care and advocate for her mother on the weekends. While she kept her company, Weiss would often bring along sewing materials, like the glass seed beads illustrated here, which would sparkle and provide a little more light in the usually windowless and dimly lit rooms.

Her mother returned home in late 2022, and for the past four years she has remained dependent on bed rest. Caring for her mother—whether through physical presence or emotional support over the phone—is a big part of Weiss’s everyday existence. She hopes to continue finding ways to create light in her mother’s life during this time, even in the smaller forms like beading.

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Babs Weiss is a textile artist and garment designer based in Philadelphia, PA. Through her work, she explores themes of melancholia, comfort, and sexuality via whimsical escapism. She is very interested in the relationship between cloth and the body, the intimacy of fiber art, and how what we wear can articulate ideas that verbal language cannot. You can find more of her work on Instagram @babstextiles.