About Threefold

Threefold began as a way of staying with things.

With texture.
With repetition.
With the slow, stubborn beauty of making something by hand in a world that prefers speed.

I’m Michelle Driver - a queer, neurodiverse artist and handweaver based in Adelaide, South Australia, on Kaurna Country. I live here with my partner Anita, my stepdaughter Lily, a small menagerie of rescue animals, and a loom (or four!) that takes up more space than it probably should (emotionally and physically).

Threefold is where my art practice meets everyday ritual.

It’s where gothic tapestries sit alongside soft scarves, resin skulls, candles, and small objects made to be lived with - not just looked at.

Some things are unsettling.
Some things are comforting.
Most are a bit of both.

The work (and why I work this way)

I work primarily with handwoven tapestry - a medium that demands time, patience, and an almost unreasonable level of commitment.

Historically, tapestry was never a casual domestic craft. It was a professional trade: physical, exacting, and deeply disciplined. I approach the loom with that same seriousness. For me, weaving is not decorative - it’s a form of sustained thinking.

The loom becomes a system.
A container.
A place where repetition allows difficult histories to be held, examined, and slowly reordered.

My work is shaped by lived experience - queerness, neurodiversity, and the long shadows of childhood trauma. These influences aren’t illustrated directly. Instead, they surface through structure, duration, and control. Through what’s restrained as much as what’s revealed.

Visually, the work lives where gothic aesthetics meet uneasy storytelling. I’m drawn to shadow, to the edges of perception where memory, imagination, and the uncanny blur. Darkness, for me, isn’t spectacle - it’s a way of noticing the beauty in what’s overlooked, discarded, or hard to name.

Sometimes humour slips in. Dry. Subtle. A release valve.

Nothing here resolves quickly.
The work asks for presence.
For sustained looking.
For a slower kind of attention.

Threefold, beyond the loom

Alongside my gallery practice, I create small-batch, handmade pieces through Threefold Designs - scarves, candles, scrunchies, resin objects - things designed to carry that same sense of intention into everyday life.

I also share my creative process more openly through video, writing, and audio. Not as instruction, but as companionship - a way of talking honestly about making, motivation, rest, obsession, and staying human inside a creative life.

Threefold isn’t about reinvention.
It’s about unfolding.

About giving yourself permission to take up space again.
To play.
To sit with complexity.
To choose objects - and practices - that feel like you.

Recognition

My work has been recognised nationally, including winning the 2016 Port Pirie Art Prize and being selected as a finalist in numerous Australian art prizes.

Most recently, my tapestry Warp / Weft was included in Radical Textiles at the Art Gallery of South Australia, situating my practice within Australia’s contemporary textile discourse.