The intersection of nature, sustainability & care

The Textile Art of Alissa Alfonso

Alissa Alfonso’s solo exhibition “Weathering” will bring art, joy, and biocentrism to the Miami Beach Botanical Garden this Fall. By making local plants and the South Florida landscape the subject, Alissa’s artwork de centers humans, the unequivocal focus of Western art and culture since the Renaissance. Her work exemplifies biocentrism, an ethical framework that assigns equal moral consideration and intrinsic value to all life forms. Alfonso raises awareness about the climate crisis gently, not with blaring alarms, but with a subtle call for those willing to listen and slow down.

Dawn Rainbow Landscape 3, 2025, 53” x 5” x 71” Stuffed & stretched textile, hand-dyed textile waste, reused fiberfill, reused organza, fiber stabilizer, thread.

Her soft sculptures of rainbows, puffy clouds, and healing botanical plants will animate the Miami Beach Botanical Garden, an urban oasis located in the place scientists call “ground zero” for climate change. As Alfonso describes it, she “has created a living garden of reclaimed wonders where snails carry time on their backs, jellyfish float between worlds, and blooms turn toward a light born of forgotten things.”

Alfonso approaches urgent conversations around climate change from a dreamlike perspective rooted in care and nurturing. Her art work reveals our interconnectedness with the Earth and with one another. Rather than preach doom-and-gloom climate anxiety, the work gently enunciates the regenerative capacity of art.

Beauty Berry II, 2025, hand dyed textile waste, reused fiber-fill, wire, thread, textile stabilizer. Base:balls recovered from Intracoastal + shredded textile shoddy

According to The Guardian, our connection to nature “has declined by more than 60% since 1800, almost exactly mirroring the disappearance of natural words such as river, moss and blossom from books.” Alfonso’s work reminds us that despite this collective loss, nature is resilient, and for those of us who live in Miami, it engulfs us.

Alissa Alfonso’s art is deeply rooted in her experience of growing up in Florida. “Being born and raised in Miami,” she says, “has deeply shaped my practice. The natural environment, its humidity, the intense sun, vibrant flora, and shifting skies continually inspire my work. I’m especially drawn to the subtleties of seasonal change in a tropical climate, where summer never truly ends but the light softens and the colors shift.”

Through my friendship and admiration for Alfonso, I have witnessed her commitment to the environment and her local community firsthand. There is nothing performative or preachy about her process; it is infused with play and wonder. Motherhood plays a central role in her practice. According to Alfonso, “as a mother, I’ve spent years creating in the margins, raising children while continuing to make work, often with limited resources and time. Many of us do this quietly and persistently, multitasking our way into visibility. That lived experience has shaped not only my materials but also my perspective, finding value in what others discard, and transforming it into something that speaks of care, resilience, and memory.”

Glades Night Landscape, 2025, Super stuffed, hand dyed textile waste, oil stick, reused fiberfill, reused neoprene, fiber stabilizer, thread

Her materials are salvaged and up-cycled, making her work truly sustainable in every sense of the word. She works with plastic beach balls, Halloween costumes (thrifted Disney princess dresses provide the iridescent shine in her clouds) and hand-dyed textiles. As she states: “many of my sculptures are built upon worn-out playground balls—collected from local schools or found washed up along beaches, intracoastal waterways, roadsides, and trash piles. These discarded objects serve as sculptural foundations, symbolizing both play and waste, and grounding the work in real-world material cycles. To further confront the environmental cost of overconsumption, I incorporate fused plastics that are sewn, stuffed, and transformed into soft forms. These plastics are sometimes floated in waterways or strung overhead, creating a visual tension between the organic and the synthetic, between what belongs and what lingers.”

Textile as a medium has been synonymous with communication for centuries, in fact, the word “text” derives from the Latin textus, or “woven.” Textiles touch every aspect of our lives, from birth to death we are continuously covered in fiber. lately textiles are ubiquitous in the global art world, but as an artistic medium, cultures ranging from the Incan empire to The Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective have used them to communicate for centuries. In contrast to flat, digitized, modern screens, textiles are earthy, timeless and tactile - just like Alfonso’s work.

This exhibition, informed by her nurturing gaze, asks the viewer to reflect on the true meaning of sustainability in a time of devastating ecological change.

“Within us all is grief for what is happening

to our world…That’s because I belong.

That’s because I am part of the sacred

living body of Earth.”

- Johana Macy

Veronica Pesantes-Vallejo, Miami, 2025