Farnham Maltings recently hosted a day of talks by craft makers and a representative of the Crafts Council on the maker's career and business development options.
I was very surprised at the low attendance - it was a free event and getting to ask the Craft Council questions and hearing of opportunities for development is not that common unless you count whatever is out there on the Internet.
Anyway, I quite like going to Farnham, it is always worth going to the New Ashgate Gallery and getting to see how makers had developed themselves and their work was worth a visit. Some of the makers at the talk were quite far down their career paths and were experts in their fields, in glass for example. There were perspectives from makers whose work went beyond borders, to North African filigree jewellery work, and there were young people who had graduate a few years ago. All makers had some connection to the University of Creative Arts, Farnham, and there were also an opportunity to learn a bit more about their MA so I was pleased to have gone, because that is one option I have been considering for some time in the future.
In the Q&A sessions topics such as working with galleries, how to develop your skills and what you can do to move on with your career were discussed. It is interesting how there is such a gap between the people who train in art colleges and people who do craft as a hobby. When I look at what some of my Guild colleagues make and look at what professional makers do there is sometimes very little difference in quality, but I guess one of the key factors is motivation - hobbyists are not necessarily wnatign a career in their craft, they may be at a stage in their lives that making is a way of developing themselves and their creativeness, and whilst professional maker are compelled by the same or similar motivation, they seek a lifestyle that will allow them to earm a living making. Certainly at the craft day the makers talking there were more keen on their own expression than commercial compromises, although there were gentle suggestions of thinking about what market niches your work fits into.
When you are as far down your life as I am am for example, having spent a fair bit of time in education already and now working, looking at taking up full time education in the crafts or arts would be such a huge step that it would need serious thought. But, working full time also means that developing your level of skill takes so much longer, and the benefit of being in a nurturing environment such as an art college, with all the materials and technology in easy reach are missing. Developing a critical slant to your work that is also enabling is difficult to establish when you work by yourself, and perhaps that best thing to do is to find some groups to join that are at the level or even just beyond the level you aspire to be at. At least there would be a social network behind your work, and as one of the speakers explained, being in a groups harnesses resources and helps get exhibitions and so on.
So there was a fair bit to inspire further thought, and also some pictures of fine works that the makers had made that were shared with us on the day. I try to find out as much as I can about cultures of making and getting a view form the insight of how to develop your professional life in the arts, and this day was a good introduction to some of the issues that arise on your way if choose that way.
Showing posts with label talk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label talk. Show all posts
Saturday, 22 October 2016
Thursday, 10 March 2016
UCA symposium and Dorothy Caldwell - A course at the Royal School of Needlework
This was a treat. In the same week two related great textile events. The University of the Creative Arts, hosted through the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham, organised a symposium on damage and repair, entitled 'What do I do to make it OK?'. This was a symposium that followed an exhibition of the same name with a number of exhibitors who also spoke on the day. And then at the weekend Dorothy Caldwell taught a class at the Royal School of Needlework, I guess as she was already over here to show some of her work at the exhibition and to attend the symposium.
Symposium: What do I do to make it OK?
This event consisted of a number of quite different talks by different types of presenters: academics, artists, makers, researchers and community artists. The idea of damage and repair was interpreted quite widely from broken communities, repairing the soul, to more literal meaning of repair through mending.
The first keynote speaker was Bouke de Vries. A high end artist with an interesting background in fashion and ceramics conservation and now working in sculpture. He showed a lot of his work in a chronology of his development as a maker, including works based on the Dutch still life genre and some quite humourous pieces, including a Marge Simpson as a Madonna with a number smaller Simpsons at her side. This was one of the better talks and others that stood out for me were: a talk by a community artist (Claire wellesley-Smith, author of 'Slow Stitch'), whose challenge in a deprived area of Bradford was tangible, a talk by Celia Pym on repairing stuff in a dissecting room, a presentation by Fredie Robins on her knitted work, which included some repaired by Celia Pym, and a great talk at a time when energy levels were short, on women's memories of repairing, mending and the tools of sewing, including button boxes and darning mushrooms.
I was really happy to have attended this event. It is rare to get a whole day of such good speakers. I would have preferred that they had had fewer speakers and given people longer time to speak. There were some talks that were poorly targeted at the audience, and others that needed to have practiced beforehand, and at 20 minutes for each some of the talks whizzed through. There was a lot to think about and wonder at, and you sometimes questioned what might come next for some of these artists.
The exhibition was also quite stimulating. There were examples of Pym's work with repaired socks hanging on the wall, some of Caldwell's smaller pieces and other works using, for example found objects and juxtaposing them with natural materials such as shiny silvery packaging for tights from which dried grasses were suspended, drawings and other works.
Royal School of Needlework: Dorothy Caldwell
The Canadian artist, Dorothy Caldwell, is a well-known name in the world of quilting. I saw her work a few years ago at the Festival of Quilts. Her background is originally in fine art, in painting and print making, and she works with her textiles in a painterly way, thinking carefully about materials, how fabrics are composed and asembled and moving beyond the quilt, to works on paper. She is interested in textiles from daily life, the simple stitching made by ordinary women as they create the materials stuff of everyday life. The course was based on her considerations of kantha quilting and she gave us a talk of a study visit she had made to India looking at the application of this technique, as well as showing her own work.
Here Dorothy is showing a kantha quilt she has brought back from India. She was considering the iconography of the work, how stitching was used and the way the women's co-operative used the kantha tradition to tell meaningful stories for the women in the present.
She laid out some of her work and sketchbooks for us to look at, and to learn from her processes. This was quite interesting, to touch someone else's process and see how she experiments with materials and tools.
The course consisted in a few short drawing exercises, including drawing marks based on sounds gathered in the grounds of Hampton Court and drawing lines and impressions from walking and observation.
We were provided with a pack of materials and thread and given some drawing paper to use. Above you can see some of the sound-marks I recorded using pen and charcoal.
Here you see the work in progress, a sample with couched thread, the drawing and some of the threads I used.
Overall this was a very useful course to inspire further work. Dorothy suggested we were doing a five day course in a single day, and I am guessing that if spread out, having more time to think and to prepare various stages we might have had time to finish things and to experiment further. As it is the course was a useful trigger for thinking about next steps.
Dorothy Caldwell's work considers the landscape and the materials in it. I find it interesting that the combination of the thought pattern concerned with ethnic traditions in making with a concern with the stuff of the landscape (marks, colours, earth) creates her unique artistic language.
I think it it worth remembering that we can use references in all manner if different ways, not just a literal reinterpretation, but let the idea of some of the sources be channelled through experimental work, drawing and working out of ideas that concern us. I would like to think about that a bit more. When I see certain textile artists with good ideas, that are then repeated over several years in almost the same way I wonder about renewal of work, how one develops and grows and shifts. To bring this thought back to Bouke de Vries' talk: what he showed was that there is always something new to explore, interesting sources to work out, and that even one's training need not be limited but can be built on and re-generated.
Symposium: What do I do to make it OK?
This event consisted of a number of quite different talks by different types of presenters: academics, artists, makers, researchers and community artists. The idea of damage and repair was interpreted quite widely from broken communities, repairing the soul, to more literal meaning of repair through mending.
The first keynote speaker was Bouke de Vries. A high end artist with an interesting background in fashion and ceramics conservation and now working in sculpture. He showed a lot of his work in a chronology of his development as a maker, including works based on the Dutch still life genre and some quite humourous pieces, including a Marge Simpson as a Madonna with a number smaller Simpsons at her side. This was one of the better talks and others that stood out for me were: a talk by a community artist (Claire wellesley-Smith, author of 'Slow Stitch'), whose challenge in a deprived area of Bradford was tangible, a talk by Celia Pym on repairing stuff in a dissecting room, a presentation by Fredie Robins on her knitted work, which included some repaired by Celia Pym, and a great talk at a time when energy levels were short, on women's memories of repairing, mending and the tools of sewing, including button boxes and darning mushrooms.
I was really happy to have attended this event. It is rare to get a whole day of such good speakers. I would have preferred that they had had fewer speakers and given people longer time to speak. There were some talks that were poorly targeted at the audience, and others that needed to have practiced beforehand, and at 20 minutes for each some of the talks whizzed through. There was a lot to think about and wonder at, and you sometimes questioned what might come next for some of these artists.
The exhibition was also quite stimulating. There were examples of Pym's work with repaired socks hanging on the wall, some of Caldwell's smaller pieces and other works using, for example found objects and juxtaposing them with natural materials such as shiny silvery packaging for tights from which dried grasses were suspended, drawings and other works.
Royal School of Needlework: Dorothy Caldwell
The Canadian artist, Dorothy Caldwell, is a well-known name in the world of quilting. I saw her work a few years ago at the Festival of Quilts. Her background is originally in fine art, in painting and print making, and she works with her textiles in a painterly way, thinking carefully about materials, how fabrics are composed and asembled and moving beyond the quilt, to works on paper. She is interested in textiles from daily life, the simple stitching made by ordinary women as they create the materials stuff of everyday life. The course was based on her considerations of kantha quilting and she gave us a talk of a study visit she had made to India looking at the application of this technique, as well as showing her own work.
Here Dorothy is showing a kantha quilt she has brought back from India. She was considering the iconography of the work, how stitching was used and the way the women's co-operative used the kantha tradition to tell meaningful stories for the women in the present.
The course consisted in a few short drawing exercises, including drawing marks based on sounds gathered in the grounds of Hampton Court and drawing lines and impressions from walking and observation.
I picked up all manner of sounds including planes overhead, birdsong, people talking, swans and crows squawking and crunching pebbles underfoot. There was a very keen robin sitting on top of the topiary and I managed to zoom in on him after my drawing exercise.
Here you see the work in progress, a sample with couched thread, the drawing and some of the threads I used.
Overall this was a very useful course to inspire further work. Dorothy suggested we were doing a five day course in a single day, and I am guessing that if spread out, having more time to think and to prepare various stages we might have had time to finish things and to experiment further. As it is the course was a useful trigger for thinking about next steps.
Dorothy Caldwell's work considers the landscape and the materials in it. I find it interesting that the combination of the thought pattern concerned with ethnic traditions in making with a concern with the stuff of the landscape (marks, colours, earth) creates her unique artistic language.
I think it it worth remembering that we can use references in all manner if different ways, not just a literal reinterpretation, but let the idea of some of the sources be channelled through experimental work, drawing and working out of ideas that concern us. I would like to think about that a bit more. When I see certain textile artists with good ideas, that are then repeated over several years in almost the same way I wonder about renewal of work, how one develops and grows and shifts. To bring this thought back to Bouke de Vries' talk: what he showed was that there is always something new to explore, interesting sources to work out, and that even one's training need not be limited but can be built on and re-generated.
Sunday, 2 August 2015
What is handwoven tapestry’s place in contemporary art? - 31st July
On Friday I attended the symposium on tapestry organised by West Dean College. This was one of those rare occasions which, if you are a little bit interested in tapestry as I am, you grab and join. I took a holiday day and went along.
A number of tapestry weavers spoke of their work: Anne Jackson, Shelley Goldsmith, Katherine Swailes, Philip Sanderson and the felt maker Liz Clay, and there were talks by others to contextualise tapestry weave, Lesley Millar and Yvonna Demczynska from Flow Gallery. It was a very successful day, the talks were varied and showed how broad or narrow you can interpret this particular weaving process.
Jackson's work on witchcraft, its history and metaphorical uses in current language was informed by a depth of reading over several years. She uses a knotting technique using half hitches which allows for flexibility of shape, and she can still achieve a great deal of detail in her expression. Swailes showed pictures from her background in costume making, and I was very happy to see she had made costume for Cate Blanchett in Oscar and Lucinda, which I had recently watched again. Katherine uses materials as a starting point in her personal works, but also works at West Dean as a studio weaver, interpreting art for commissions. Similarly Philip Sanderson is a studio weaver there, but he also teaches and has his own practice, having worked on major commissions for Parliament, Portcullis House.
Shelley Goldsmith described her work, which was conceptually oriented, using both tapestry, print, stitch and any other techniques that would support her ideas. Hers was a very lively talk and there were many ideas present in her work, which she described as mixed media. Liz Clay on the other hand is a felt maker who works experimentally sometimes for the haute couture industry. She is a highly reflective practitioner, deeply interested in her technique and has been looking at British wools and their uses in felt making, especially those wools normally disposed of. She had spent a month with two Aubusson-trained weavers in Felletin, working on a shared project linking tapestry and felt, creating in the end a very fine tapestry made in 13 long strips mounted side-by-side to enable the variety of techniques to be cohesively joined.
The talk by the Flow Gallery owner placed tapestry amongst other crafts in order to show how crafts can be marketed to the collector's market. There were images of the gallery and how it had been re-designed moving away from being a white cube to be more 'home'-like. She also discussed the large crafts fairs such as Collect in London and SOFA in the US. Interestingly she had a liking for Aino Kajaniemi, so I am quite excited about that and will go to the gallery when I am next in London, I love Kajaniemi's work.
Lesley Millar discussed how tapestry might be a vehicle for dissent and subversion. She started off talking about Hannah Ryggen's work - as I mentioned in a different post, Hannah Ryggen is now being re-discovered in discussions on the politics of fibre art - and went on to show a number of tapestry artists' work. On a couple of occasions she stated that this work was both beautiful and subversive, a point that I am struggling with. My question would be; at which point does the beauty of an object over-ride the point being made in the work - if an object is to speak of difficult themes, how 'difficult' should the object be? If one chooses to be representational in one's expression how does one speak - using an illustrative style, or metaphorical, or both?
In any case in finishing off with Millar's talk, the day left much to think about.
After the talk there was a tour of the West Dean tapestry studio, and then on to a private view of the current tapestry exhibition, Hallreef, which had quite a number of tapestries on show, in a smaller format, it covered works by both professionals, new graduates and amateurs, which was refreshing. All in all it was a full day and I went home feeling there is still some mileage in tapestry, and so much more to think about.
A number of tapestry weavers spoke of their work: Anne Jackson, Shelley Goldsmith, Katherine Swailes, Philip Sanderson and the felt maker Liz Clay, and there were talks by others to contextualise tapestry weave, Lesley Millar and Yvonna Demczynska from Flow Gallery. It was a very successful day, the talks were varied and showed how broad or narrow you can interpret this particular weaving process.
Jackson's work on witchcraft, its history and metaphorical uses in current language was informed by a depth of reading over several years. She uses a knotting technique using half hitches which allows for flexibility of shape, and she can still achieve a great deal of detail in her expression. Swailes showed pictures from her background in costume making, and I was very happy to see she had made costume for Cate Blanchett in Oscar and Lucinda, which I had recently watched again. Katherine uses materials as a starting point in her personal works, but also works at West Dean as a studio weaver, interpreting art for commissions. Similarly Philip Sanderson is a studio weaver there, but he also teaches and has his own practice, having worked on major commissions for Parliament, Portcullis House.
Shelley Goldsmith described her work, which was conceptually oriented, using both tapestry, print, stitch and any other techniques that would support her ideas. Hers was a very lively talk and there were many ideas present in her work, which she described as mixed media. Liz Clay on the other hand is a felt maker who works experimentally sometimes for the haute couture industry. She is a highly reflective practitioner, deeply interested in her technique and has been looking at British wools and their uses in felt making, especially those wools normally disposed of. She had spent a month with two Aubusson-trained weavers in Felletin, working on a shared project linking tapestry and felt, creating in the end a very fine tapestry made in 13 long strips mounted side-by-side to enable the variety of techniques to be cohesively joined.
The talk by the Flow Gallery owner placed tapestry amongst other crafts in order to show how crafts can be marketed to the collector's market. There were images of the gallery and how it had been re-designed moving away from being a white cube to be more 'home'-like. She also discussed the large crafts fairs such as Collect in London and SOFA in the US. Interestingly she had a liking for Aino Kajaniemi, so I am quite excited about that and will go to the gallery when I am next in London, I love Kajaniemi's work.
Lesley Millar discussed how tapestry might be a vehicle for dissent and subversion. She started off talking about Hannah Ryggen's work - as I mentioned in a different post, Hannah Ryggen is now being re-discovered in discussions on the politics of fibre art - and went on to show a number of tapestry artists' work. On a couple of occasions she stated that this work was both beautiful and subversive, a point that I am struggling with. My question would be; at which point does the beauty of an object over-ride the point being made in the work - if an object is to speak of difficult themes, how 'difficult' should the object be? If one chooses to be representational in one's expression how does one speak - using an illustrative style, or metaphorical, or both?
In any case in finishing off with Millar's talk, the day left much to think about.
After the talk there was a tour of the West Dean tapestry studio, and then on to a private view of the current tapestry exhibition, Hallreef, which had quite a number of tapestries on show, in a smaller format, it covered works by both professionals, new graduates and amateurs, which was refreshing. All in all it was a full day and I went home feeling there is still some mileage in tapestry, and so much more to think about.
Sunday, 22 February 2015
A fair, a talk, some wool and a bit of spinning
Unravel - a the knitting fair
Yesterday I went to Unravel at the Farnham Maltings with a friend form my Guild. They have this annual knitting event with a lot of stalls selling wool and accessories, a few courses and talks.
It is a full day, your senses are overloaded and when you first arrive you walk around in a sort of trance, picking up wool here, gazing at colours there and trying to see everything all at once, through the many, many people who are all there, doing the same thing.
So, we walked through the great hall first. Stopped at length at the John Arbon stall as he had a lot of fibre there this year, and you can usually grab some sort of bargain if you root around the offers in a large tub to the side. He had some very good fibre on show, superwash wensleydale was my favourite - in fact gotland and wensleydale wool are by far my all-shining fibre favourites at the moment - loose locks (both), a strong hairy fibre (wensleydale), and they can have the most beautiful silvery greys. It was great. I got some bags from the big tub, and we went on our way through the hall.....
The wool
And what was next - well, there was the Little Grey Sheep stall with bags of gotland fleece just waiting to be felt and adored. I bought 1 kg of this fleece - extravagant I know, but I already have a spinning project on the go with grey wensleydale so this will fit very well with that in the ply.
There is just so much stuff at Unravel, and you can get a bit carried away. Room after room of dyed yarn. I have to say I find quite a number of the stalls are repetitive, there is only little variation on the theme of dyed yarn, but luckily there are also stalls with buttons, some with vintage woollen mill items and rug wool, and some with natural wools waiting to be dyed. And that was where Texere fitted in - they had the most beautiful singles wensley dale wool in large hanks - so there is the theme again, the strong yarn with a great soft lustre. I went back there in the afternoon and bought around 1 kg of that too!
For lunch we went into Farnham via the New Ashgate Gallery of craft. It is a fine little gallery with some good things, a bit of jewellery, ceramics, prints and paintings. There were some Barry Stedman pots there so I got to see what his chunky work is like, and some nice glass things.
After lunch we went to the Craft Study Centre to see the historical exhibition of students' work, FARNHAM TEXTILES 1949-2015: Celebrating sixty-six years, which was a mixture of books showing systematic approaches to dyeing with synthetic dyes and small displays of finished items, including a lace shawl that was in the most intricate work I have seen in a long time. There was also a pleated and heat-set scarf in the manner of Reiko Sudo (might have been hers, but I didn't check the list and there was no label) - good to see in reality what you otherwise see in photos.
A talk
.......Then back to the Maltings to buy more stuff - shawl pins and that wonderful wool at Texere, and then on to sit in on a lecture by Alison Ellen, the knitwear designer. This was an inspiring talk - on how she works with colour in her design. She really only covered those basic techniques that have been tested in assignment 2 of the course, but here it was shown in practice. If I take a couple of things from the talk that I will think about more in my own work it is her treatment of colour proportions derived from photographs, say, using a theme (her examples included green, but she also covered reds in another image) - and sampling using first simple stitches and then gradually working up more samples to play with the idea. Her language also showed how reflective she is about her work. She used the term 'cloth' about the knitted fabric. OK, that may sound obvious, but when I have been making knitted garments, I use the word 'knitting' about it, or a 'knitted' thing, but that slight inflection of the word changes things I think. knitting is a cloth-making process and by showing how it makes a fabric, a certain value is giving to it that elevates it and gives it a certain value. She also spoke about using rhythm and repeat in her colour designs, and thinking about slight variations derived in the dyeing process as 'syncopations'. Again that musical reference, but an interesting dimension to thinking about the work of what design can do. Alison Ellen is a true craftsperson and I think her designs for hand knitted garments are of a quality rare in the knitwear world.
And a bit of spinning
Obviously with such a full day there was not a lot of time to rest when I got home. However I knew what was in those bags and I wanted to bond with some of it straightaway. The wensleydale yarn was washed and hung to dry in preparation for dyeing some day. It is a very strong yarn and has a heavy body to it - I suspect it will hang well. It deserves a special pattern so that project is still to come. But as I alluded to I have some dark gotland lambswool on my spinningwheel destined for a project with some paler wensleydale, so I pulled out the darker strands of the new fleece and am now spinning it into the lambswool with some interesting green-black silk to create a bit of interest - a very slow project done on the side or when I have a moment of longing for spinning. Oh, it is a delight to spin a beautiful fleece - I spin from the grease (i.e. unwashed with the lanolin still in) or from commercially prepared rovings (I don't care too much for carding, there is just not the time and it is one preparation step that industry has made so much lighter). I don't mind the slight odour of urine and sheep, in fact I find it comforting - it is almost the closest I can get to the nature of the animal without rearing it, and that is a gift from nature in the process of making.
Yesterday I went to Unravel at the Farnham Maltings with a friend form my Guild. They have this annual knitting event with a lot of stalls selling wool and accessories, a few courses and talks.
It is a full day, your senses are overloaded and when you first arrive you walk around in a sort of trance, picking up wool here, gazing at colours there and trying to see everything all at once, through the many, many people who are all there, doing the same thing.
So, we walked through the great hall first. Stopped at length at the John Arbon stall as he had a lot of fibre there this year, and you can usually grab some sort of bargain if you root around the offers in a large tub to the side. He had some very good fibre on show, superwash wensleydale was my favourite - in fact gotland and wensleydale wool are by far my all-shining fibre favourites at the moment - loose locks (both), a strong hairy fibre (wensleydale), and they can have the most beautiful silvery greys. It was great. I got some bags from the big tub, and we went on our way through the hall.....
The wool
And what was next - well, there was the Little Grey Sheep stall with bags of gotland fleece just waiting to be felt and adored. I bought 1 kg of this fleece - extravagant I know, but I already have a spinning project on the go with grey wensleydale so this will fit very well with that in the ply.
There is just so much stuff at Unravel, and you can get a bit carried away. Room after room of dyed yarn. I have to say I find quite a number of the stalls are repetitive, there is only little variation on the theme of dyed yarn, but luckily there are also stalls with buttons, some with vintage woollen mill items and rug wool, and some with natural wools waiting to be dyed. And that was where Texere fitted in - they had the most beautiful singles wensley dale wool in large hanks - so there is the theme again, the strong yarn with a great soft lustre. I went back there in the afternoon and bought around 1 kg of that too!
For lunch we went into Farnham via the New Ashgate Gallery of craft. It is a fine little gallery with some good things, a bit of jewellery, ceramics, prints and paintings. There were some Barry Stedman pots there so I got to see what his chunky work is like, and some nice glass things.
After lunch we went to the Craft Study Centre to see the historical exhibition of students' work, FARNHAM TEXTILES 1949-2015: Celebrating sixty-six years, which was a mixture of books showing systematic approaches to dyeing with synthetic dyes and small displays of finished items, including a lace shawl that was in the most intricate work I have seen in a long time. There was also a pleated and heat-set scarf in the manner of Reiko Sudo (might have been hers, but I didn't check the list and there was no label) - good to see in reality what you otherwise see in photos.
A talk
.......Then back to the Maltings to buy more stuff - shawl pins and that wonderful wool at Texere, and then on to sit in on a lecture by Alison Ellen, the knitwear designer. This was an inspiring talk - on how she works with colour in her design. She really only covered those basic techniques that have been tested in assignment 2 of the course, but here it was shown in practice. If I take a couple of things from the talk that I will think about more in my own work it is her treatment of colour proportions derived from photographs, say, using a theme (her examples included green, but she also covered reds in another image) - and sampling using first simple stitches and then gradually working up more samples to play with the idea. Her language also showed how reflective she is about her work. She used the term 'cloth' about the knitted fabric. OK, that may sound obvious, but when I have been making knitted garments, I use the word 'knitting' about it, or a 'knitted' thing, but that slight inflection of the word changes things I think. knitting is a cloth-making process and by showing how it makes a fabric, a certain value is giving to it that elevates it and gives it a certain value. She also spoke about using rhythm and repeat in her colour designs, and thinking about slight variations derived in the dyeing process as 'syncopations'. Again that musical reference, but an interesting dimension to thinking about the work of what design can do. Alison Ellen is a true craftsperson and I think her designs for hand knitted garments are of a quality rare in the knitwear world.
And a bit of spinning
Obviously with such a full day there was not a lot of time to rest when I got home. However I knew what was in those bags and I wanted to bond with some of it straightaway. The wensleydale yarn was washed and hung to dry in preparation for dyeing some day. It is a very strong yarn and has a heavy body to it - I suspect it will hang well. It deserves a special pattern so that project is still to come. But as I alluded to I have some dark gotland lambswool on my spinningwheel destined for a project with some paler wensleydale, so I pulled out the darker strands of the new fleece and am now spinning it into the lambswool with some interesting green-black silk to create a bit of interest - a very slow project done on the side or when I have a moment of longing for spinning. Oh, it is a delight to spin a beautiful fleece - I spin from the grease (i.e. unwashed with the lanolin still in) or from commercially prepared rovings (I don't care too much for carding, there is just not the time and it is one preparation step that industry has made so much lighter). I don't mind the slight odour of urine and sheep, in fact I find it comforting - it is almost the closest I can get to the nature of the animal without rearing it, and that is a gift from nature in the process of making.
Sunday, 8 February 2015
Talk by Emma Sheldon - textile designer
Yesterday the Guild I am a member of had a speaker visiting, Emma Sheldon. A young textile designer from a 'mixed media' background and an MA from the Royal College of Art, she spoke about her career so far and her current work in the automotive industry.
This was a very interesting and stimulating talk. She talked through her early steps in the knit and fashion industry, where she had tried various things in the fast paced culture on the New York Fashion scene.
Her student life had carried her to collaborative projects with automotive designers which had given her a profile in the industry where she now works. She has been involved in high-profile projects for Audi, Aston Martin and Jaguar-Landrover. This seems at first sight to be a far call from her experience of developing laser-cut, pleated synthetic surfaces in textiles, but actually she explained the design and collaborative process that they work through and it became clear that the design principles she learned at college she applies in the 'blue-sky thinking' environment in car design. She still uses mood boards to stimulate visions of client's needs, she works on experimental pieces to work out techniques, textures and stretch the process and she collaborates in a group of 6 textile designers to create the whole design concept of a vehicle range from colour finished, metal fittings, upholstery both front and back and any other visible surface it seems.
Interestingly she also described some of the struggles she had had on the way, how she had worried about knowing the detail behind the engineering of any design ideas she helped developed. Some where on the way she had realised though, that actually she does not need to be concerned about the engineering problem, and that that is part of the dialogue between the visual and textural design and the engineering questions that this may give rise to. She was appreciative of everything she was learning and it seemed she was open to new approaches. Her talk showed me that this is a core skill of the designer - that we need to be open and experimental with what we do. That we should never rest and just try something, even if it is just for the sake of the experiment itself.
In the final section of her talk she also made it clear that however 'high tech' her samples looked - and they were grey, metallic, plastic pieces, her actual pleating method was by hand. I am guessing she probably used the computer to design waves and details in the laser cut elements, but it was clear that the craft itself was on an equal level with the tools she employed. She said that a key thing she learned at art school was to learn the skills and craft itself and then one can break the rules, and this seems to have put her in a strong place in what she now does. I enjoyed this talk very much, it reminded me of why going to see student work and new design is always valuable and stimulating for carrying our own work forward.
This was a very interesting and stimulating talk. She talked through her early steps in the knit and fashion industry, where she had tried various things in the fast paced culture on the New York Fashion scene.
Her student life had carried her to collaborative projects with automotive designers which had given her a profile in the industry where she now works. She has been involved in high-profile projects for Audi, Aston Martin and Jaguar-Landrover. This seems at first sight to be a far call from her experience of developing laser-cut, pleated synthetic surfaces in textiles, but actually she explained the design and collaborative process that they work through and it became clear that the design principles she learned at college she applies in the 'blue-sky thinking' environment in car design. She still uses mood boards to stimulate visions of client's needs, she works on experimental pieces to work out techniques, textures and stretch the process and she collaborates in a group of 6 textile designers to create the whole design concept of a vehicle range from colour finished, metal fittings, upholstery both front and back and any other visible surface it seems.
Interestingly she also described some of the struggles she had had on the way, how she had worried about knowing the detail behind the engineering of any design ideas she helped developed. Some where on the way she had realised though, that actually she does not need to be concerned about the engineering problem, and that that is part of the dialogue between the visual and textural design and the engineering questions that this may give rise to. She was appreciative of everything she was learning and it seemed she was open to new approaches. Her talk showed me that this is a core skill of the designer - that we need to be open and experimental with what we do. That we should never rest and just try something, even if it is just for the sake of the experiment itself.
In the final section of her talk she also made it clear that however 'high tech' her samples looked - and they were grey, metallic, plastic pieces, her actual pleating method was by hand. I am guessing she probably used the computer to design waves and details in the laser cut elements, but it was clear that the craft itself was on an equal level with the tools she employed. She said that a key thing she learned at art school was to learn the skills and craft itself and then one can break the rules, and this seems to have put her in a strong place in what she now does. I enjoyed this talk very much, it reminded me of why going to see student work and new design is always valuable and stimulating for carrying our own work forward.
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