Textile Study Group blog

As we adapt to the new normal, most of us have seen many changes to our lives and how we navigate creating may also have been impacted.  Artistic inspiration may  have eluded you  or maybe this period of time has given you more energy to devote to your practice. Our artist this week Julia faced many additional challenges and she discusses just how inventive she had to become. Sometimes we are forced into new ways of working and just have to embrace these moments.

Julia Triston
During this project have you looked at a new way of working ?
Working towards the Insights project has been quite an extraordinary experience for me. Like many fellow Textile Study Group members, I began this project in 2018, following our successful DIS/rupt exhibition tour.

I embarked upon this project with much enthusiasm, but in 2019 my work for Insights came to a complete halt as I packed up my home and studio in the north east of England and permanently moved to Denmark.

Temporarily homeless for a few months, with all my belongings in storage – and without my usual resources, materials and sewing machine to hand – this was an unsettling and challenging time. Whilst finding my way in a new country, navigating my way around a different language and looking for a permanent place to live and work, I had to find an innovative way to develop and continue my textile artworks for Insights.

Just before the Covid-19 pandemic compounded the situation, I borrowed a sewing machine from a new friend. I discovered charity shops where I could buy raw materials. I chanced upon a shop selling machine embroidery threads. And I found a city café that had a stock of free art magazines. At a temporary desk at a friend’s house, I was able to recommence my research, collaging, sampling and stitching and continue developing my pieces for Insights.

So, yes – having been pushed outside my comfort zone – I have certainly had to look at new ways of working for this project!

Are the ideas/themes for this project ongoing or are they new ?
Each body of work I create does lead on from my last one, and there are connections and themes that run through all of my textile pieces. Underlying all my work is my interest in the memories of cloth; from discarded household linen to previously worn underwear, my raw materials are all second hand.

I am interested in creating conceptual textiles about identity and human rights issues which convey a political message through their narrative. Some of my works are explicit and shocking, which is the point. They are not designed to make comfortable viewing – they are statements designed to raise awareness. Although my themes continue, they are developing and becoming bolder and more thought provoking.

My current work investigates issues such as sexism, abuse and consent, and highlights campaigns supported by Amnesty International such as #LetsTalkAboutYes.

I start each new project with a sketchbook beginning by jotting down my thoughts and ideas about the exhibition title, then add primary visual research such as photographs, postcards, quotations and newspaper cuttings. Using this collected imagery I develop my themes through sketches, swatches, stitch samples and collage. Whatever I am making I have to be totally absorbed and immersed in the process; I need to believe in what I am doing and feel inspired and passionate about the statement and integrity my work will convey.

During the past few  months home has become a central focus for a lot of  us, it has become a place of safety in uncertain times.  For some, it has allowed us to stop and see things that once we overlooked or ignored.  In this weeks interview  Jan talks about the landscape that surrounds her home.

Jan Evans
Are the themes/ideas for this project ongoing or are they new?
My local landscape has been an ongoing inspiration for many years, the woods, hills and fields that surround my home, and the wildlife within it, have become even more important to me over the last weeks and months of Lockdown. Nature on my doorstep was blossoming, blooming and proliferating while we were held back by anxiety and worry of what could or might happen, and the news bulletins which you didn’t want to hear but had to watch with unfolding horrors.

Home has been a safe place and a sanctuary just as it was for the glassmakers from Alsace Lorraine who fled from persecution in the 16^th. century to this country and eventually to this small, quiet corner of Gloucestershire. My landscape was their landscape for the 50 or so years during which they set up a glassworks here. I wonder whether they loved this area as I do or were they so busy trying to settle in a foreign land, earn a living, feed their families, learn a foreign tongue just as the many who come to our shores today fleeing persecution and the troubles of the world.

Walking across the field where they once lived small glass fragments can be found. Also larger shards of pottery lie exposed by the plough, each autumn, tactile evidence of the work produced by the potters who came later to our area. Indications of slip trailed designs can be seen on these glazed pieces and by holding them, drawing and looking closely I have felt a connection to the fabric of their lives. So, how to combine my feelings for landscape, local history, the past and the present in a series of works has really evolved over the last 18 months.

What is your favourite part of the creative process ?
I enjoy all aspects of my work although it’s not always plain sailing.                 Starting with research on the glassmakers and potters, which has been fascinating, alongside taking photographs, drawing and note making, ideas started to develop in my sketchbook which gave me time to explore varied aspects of their story. There was also time to allow thoughts to simmer and generate. Collage and layers of design, revealing or obscuring, combining different elements, testing out ideas in paper, fabric and thread were all part of the journey but not always successful. Finding the right technique, materials and methods to develop the theme but also to be true to my own feelings for the work were paramount.

I became aware of the contrasting qualities between the fragility of glass and in Nature the delicacy of grasses and blossoms compared to the robustness of pottery and the natural elements of which it is made, clay, potash, silica and limestone. It became important for me to create my own vessels or containers, simple forms which are of today but reflecting  influences of the past. How could I achieve this?

Ultimately as my work in Insights will show, experiments with organdie, papers and wires led  me in one direction while heavy blotting paper gessoed, printed, painted and waxed took me in another.  Where these two paths will lead and what lies ahead ,who knows, but I intend to continue exploring,  experimenting and making. I am sure I am not alone  when I say  I feel I am always striving to achieve an elusive goal forever just out of reach. I suppose that is why we all keep creating and making.

During our members interviews we have ventured behind the scenes, sharing these established practitioners approach to the creative process. It is evident that the level of commitment involved in making new work and pushing their practice demonstrates courage, determination and hard work.  Sometimes this can be daunting, but in Jenny’s words…Take a deep breath and begin to stitch.

Jenny Bullen
Are the ideas/themes for this project ongoing or new?
The work for Insights is ongoing and I was pleased to have the opportunity to do so.

I am lucky to live near the sea as well as woodlands and try to establish a sense of these places in my work. Walking along the shore, for instance, and observing how the tide comes in over the mud and pebbles and the detritus it leaves behind. Because of Lockdown the woods and footpaths have been more accessible than the shore and this year I have enjoyed watching Spring gradually appear and the return of the migratory birds.

I tend to stitch intuitively, and by hand,  collecting together fabrics and threads, piecing and patching and folding and creasing.  Recently I have become interested in producing small 3d works rather than wall hung pieces as I feel quite strongly that textiles should be touched and handled as they are so tactile. I draw and paint, not as a design source, but they obviously inform my textile work.

What is your favourite part of the creative process?
For me it is the moment when I thread a needle with the absolutely right colour and thickness of thread, and know that I have searched for  the perfect fabrics among the boxes and bags scattered around the house. I find the correct size needle for my thread, my tiny stork embroidery scissors, inherited from an old friend, a thimble, take a deep breath and begin to stitch.

The Textile Study Group is a group of artists and tutors, well known for innovative and challenging approaches to art practice and contemporary teaching.  This week we dip briefly into Alice Fox’s reflective approach.

Alice Fox
Are the ideas/themes for this project ongoing or are they new ?
The themes I am working on for Insights are ongoing. I see all of my work as a continuum and although pieces might be presented as discreet ‘projects’ they are really just steps along the same pathway. The brief we developed for Insights made it clear that we wanted members to work in their usual way, recording their development process and trying to understand more about why they do what they do. Writing about it would enable a sharing of that process but also perhaps a learning experience for us individually.

As a visual artist was it a challenge to write about your practice ?
I recently completed an MA in Creative Practice. Writing reflectively about our own work was something we were very much encouraged to do as part of the course. I really valued embedding that reflection in my practice and felt it was something I wanted to continue after the course finished. It can be a challenge to take the informal reflective writing that one might do in a notebook for one’s own use and turn that into something that someone else might want to read. I have enjoyed attempting to do that coherently. As the person responsible for bringing the publication together for the group (with support of other members and our Editors June Hill and Melanie Miller) I have so enjoyed getting to know my fellow members’ work more through this project. I’m really looking forward to sharing that with our readers when the book is published.