From Playground to Fiber Art: Max Stockdale’s Collaborative Rug Project at the Ballay Center
When alumnus Max Stockdale (BDes '24) returned to Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design as an Artist in Residence at the Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion, he brought with him an unusual set of collaborators: 63 preschoolers.
Working with the CMU Children’s School, Stockdale led students through a playful design exercise that invited them to imagine their own playgrounds. Their compositions, filled with slides, sandboxes, zip lines, trampolines, and trucks, became the foundation for a large, tufted rug designed for the school.
The finished piece, titled Playground, is both artwork and play surface. Created for the Children’s School’s February unit “Our Earth,” the rug was designed to function as a space for imaginative play on the floor while also serving as a wall-hanging artwork.
“The goal was to create an immersive rug for the Children’s School,” Stockdale explains. “Loosely based on the CMU playground, the design includes 63 trees, one for each student enrolled in the school.”
To support the rug’s interactive purpose, Stockdale carefully considered how children experience color, movement, and texture. Bright, saturated tones create strong visual contrast for color recognition, while a combination of high and low pile yarn adds dimension and tactile variety.
Designing with the Children
Working directly with the students, ranging from three years old through kindergarten, was both energetic and rewarding.
“This was a new experience for me that was chaotic yet controlled,” Stockdale says. “With assistance from the preschool staff, this craft turned out great.”
Students were invited to imagine what activities they would want in a playground and translate those ideas into abstract compositions using simple shapes. Each class created designs that could stand alone as artworks.
Stockdale later wove these individual pieces together into a unified landscape, sketching pathways that connected and framed the children’s ideas.
A Community Studio at the Ballay Center
The residency at the Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion made the project especially collaborative. Over the course of the installation, more than 120 visitors stopped by the studio space to watch the process unfold through the center’s street-facing windows.
Through hands-on tufting workshops, about 30 visitors even contributed directly to the fabrication.
“It was fantastic working in the Ballay Center,” Stockdale says. “The window to show off the fabrication in real time created a lot of excitement."
The project ultimately became a community effort that extended well beyond the classroom.
“My favorite part was how collaborative the whole piece was,” he says. “It started with planning alongside Mark Baskinger, Raquel Kueffner, and Linda Hancock. Then the preschool teachers helped develop the craft activity. Sixty-three preschoolers contributed to the design and members of the community helped fabricate it.”
Delivering the Final Piece
When the rug was finally delivered to the Children’s School, the reaction from students exceeded Stockdale’s expectations.
“I knew the kids would be excited, but it was really cool to hear what they thought about it,” he says.
Before beginning the project, Stockdale had loaned rug samples to the school so students could play with them as maps and imagined environments. Watching how children interacted with those pieces offered insight into how tactile art can spark storytelling.
“It was interesting to see the stories they created,” he says. “Color became a catalyst for nostalgia and memory. Kids associated these scenes with travel, vacations, and special occasions.”
The students will soon add one final collaborative touch: signing the back of the rug.
From CMU to Fiber Art
Since graduating from the School of Design, Stockdale has built a career as a multidisciplinary artist working across watercolor, fine art, and textile-based work. Today, his practice focuses primarily on rug making and fiber art.
“I explore the material possibilities of sculpting yarn to create sensory-rich, story-driven experiences,” he says.
The design process he developed at CMU still shapes how he approaches each project.
“Research-based design, mind maps, and thinking about user journeys are tools I use daily,” he explains. “It’s about asking the important questions and refining ideas through iteration.”
Stockdale is now expanding into larger, site-specific tufted installations, continuing to create tactile works that invite interaction and storytelling.
For him, returning to campus for the Ballay Center residency was also a reminder of the design community that helped shape his path.
“Stepping back into Margaret Morrison made me happy to be part of this community again,” he says. “It felt like I never left.”