October 2023

A view from the bench, nettle dresses, and inspiring art from waste

Oct 20, 2023

Studio Views
Weaving with Beam
Things I Wish I Could See

Studio Views

The past 6 weeks have been very full. I have been stuffing my brain with many new things and making friends with my new work space.

This fall I have also had a new challenge — I have taken on a new role as an instructor in a university program! For several reasons I am keeping the school and details private, but the experience has been equal parts thrilling and challenging. My students are wonderful! I don’t think I’ve told them that yet — maybe the clever ones will Google me and read this.

Their second assignment is to create textile samples in several techniques (knit, crochet, weave, embroidery, and mending), basing their aesthetic and material choices for these samples off of a visual research project they did in the first weeks of class. My example topic was monarch butterflies, which I chose after raising four from caterpillar to butterfly this August — I took some photographs when the first eclosed (came out of its cocoon), the whole process was incredible. I put the photos on Instagram, but I’ll include two below.

I have been trying to encourage them to make ugly samples and submit them for grading — a very challenging idea! But this class is about experimentation, so I want them to take risks and try things which, in my opinion, involves making ugly things. My examples for them are ‘ugly’ by several of the definitions that I might use to categorize my ‘regular’ work, but that wasn’t the point.

Weaving with Beam

I wrote a short article about Gist Yarn’s new weights of Beam Organic Cotton that was published online last month. The link is here. It’s unusual to find a weaving yarn in three sizes, and I put them to the test solo and mixed together. Read it here.

Things I Wish I Could See

Earlier this month I read a review of a new documentary called The Nettle Dress in The Guardian (link to the story here). The film tells the tale of textile artist Allan Brown’s 7 year long project to create a dress made entirely from nettle fibres. There’s a lot more to the story than that — I’ve embedded the trailer below to whet your appetite. Fingers crossed there will be a screening in Canada!

Another thing I wish I could see this fall is the artist El Anatsui’s exhibition at Turbine Hall in London, England. His exhibition When I Last Wrote to You About Africa at the ROM in 2010 (! so long ago?) is one of the exhibitions that lingers in my mind — especially the large textile-like pieces made from hammered bottle caps salvaged from trash heaps and the Western garbage that ends up in Africa.

These works have a powerful effect from both far away and close up — I remember them as flowing and glinting colour fields from a distance, sharpening into small logos, text, and the blocky familiarity of everyday trash when within reach.

This review in The Guardian gives an overview of the exhibition, on until April 2024