For a long time, noticing was something that happened in the margins. Two decades of public work — the kind that runs on urgency and other people's needs — left little room for paying attention to anything that didn't require immediate action.

When that changed, the first thing that came back was the quiet. The second was crochet — a practice she'd carried since 1998, mostly in the background, mostly for herself. The third was color: what an avid gardener's own plants could make it, where it came from, why it looked different depending on the season and the water and the light.

That same space has opened something else: a slower return to her own roots, known and unknown — what she failed to notice before, and what catches her attention now when she looks deliberately. The practice of noticing, it turns out, goes in every direction at once.

Notice grew out of that space. Not as a project about her noticing, but as a question about everyone's: what gets your attention when no one is asking anything of you?

Meg Zaletel is a fiber artist based between Washington State and Alaska. Her work combines crochet, natural dyeing, and participatory practice. Notice is her first major visual art project.