From her studio on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the fiber artist Dana Barnes produces hybrid creations made of twisted wool and raw textiles fused with concrete, stone, wood, copper, clay, resin, rubber and, most recently, knotted antique Persian carpets. Barnes is inspired by nature’s own decorative touches, such as the way lichen embellishes rocks and branches, but she also invokes the implacable life force that produces knots, cocoons, masses. “I like to let the material itself guide me,” says Barnes, “structures emerge such as vines, tracing their own paths through space, growing beyond themselves.” Her artworks, which sometimes perform as furniture, will be on view at the Museum of Arts and Design for most of the summer. “I hope the pieces invite the viewer to encounter them not as objects, but as living entities—shifting, beating, and unapologetically alive.” —Laura Jacobs