3D experimentation

For textiles in art we were asked to experiment with a 3D piece and I chose to use copper wire and a soldering iron. This was quite tricky and fiddly but I managed to produce a 3D piece of art by creating a copper frame with a stand and placing my crochet experiment around it. The art is supposed to be purely abstract. Whilst taking photos of my piece by candle light I realised that I wanted to include the shadow.

 

 

 

 

Textiles in Art. Final Evaluation

Textiles in Art has been a very enjoyable course involving many different techniques and materials. Below is a step by step list of the different methods we practiced during the course followed by the reasons behind the idea of the final piece and the making of it.

Lino and Transfer printing. This involved creating prints that could be used several times. Transfer printing involved making a design on a piece of newsprint and using the iron to transfer the design. Lino printing (or a form that is similar to Lino printing) involved imprinting a design onto a foam board, then painting the board and pressing onto fabric.

    

Making Art through Adhesive fabrics, paints and prints. This session was very enjoyable as we were able to create our own design and I chose to make an abstract piece of work reflecting a mood rather than an object.

Suffolk Puffs. A very relaxing session where we made our own little Suffolk puffs by cutting fabric into a circle and then stitching around it and pulling in the thread creating a puffed ball-like effect.

Fabric distressing by methods such as bleaching and burning. This project was given to us as homework. The aim was to cause distress to several different pieces of fabric and this proved harder than I had imagined.

Batik. This involved trickling hot wax over fabric and then covering with fabric ink, allowing some time to dry a little and then ironing. This was very enjoyable and I used some of these pieces towards my final piece.

Photo to fabric transferring. At college we were taught to transfer images from photo to fabric by using a product called Image Maker but before this I had researched this method and found out about using a Gel or Gloss Medium. Basically covering the newly printed out image in medium and then pressing onto cotton fabric. I was very pleased with this method and used this method in my final piece.

Making a 3D model. This was achieved both at home as homework and in the classroom in groups. The cube was my homework and made from rough firm fabric. Basically I cut the fabric into two pieces and sewed them together making a cube. The sphere was created in class with Hazel and Cara and proved extremely tricky to achieve.We had to choose a building to copy to some extent and we chose a sphere like building.  It had crossed my mind that perhaps we should have chosen a more simple building to copy.

Fabric designs using paint and a roller. This was one of my favourite sessions as I was able to let myself go and keep creating. I used some of these designs in my final pieces.

Some Textile artist research involved meeting Susan Sydall who proved to be a very inspirational artist. Her work was quirky and beautifully made. I also researched artists on the Internet and found many inspirational textile artists including Joan Schulze, Jennifer Solon, Cindy Kearney, Louise Baldwin and Sarah Welsby. I had come to realise that I leaned towards the more abstract style of art and I preferred the gritty distressed look to clean and pretty.

My 3D piece of art was made using a soldering iron and copper wire. I created a frame and stand which I soldered together and placed a piece of crochet that I had made around it in an attempt to create an abstract piece of art. I may experiment more with 3D art and wire but I didn't want to choose this as my final piece as I feel I need to improve in this area.

Making the final Piece.
I decided that I wanted to create a collage for my final piece involving many little pieces, some of which had been created in college sessions. I wanted my theme to be centred around the social and economical landscape involving the mood of the people as regards the ongoing Austerity and the cuts to public services, NHS and Welfare State. Through use of my sketchbook which I used for jotting down my ideas, I began to have ideas involving bar codes to represent consumerism, tally charts to represent statistics, graffiti to represent a dissatisfied mood of the people, the game of noughts and crosses to represent winners and losers and the haves and the have-nots.  £20 notes and Euros to represent the current problems faced in these times as money is always most usually the root of most problems other than health, love and relationships but even money affects those things too. Also Newspaper headlines as the landscape is covered in the Media bombarding us with news, sometimes truthful, sometimes manipulating and cunning. I also wanted to use abstract patterns in my collage that reflected the type of mood I wanted to project. One of those pieces came from a project we did at college that came from mixing rusted screws and old rusty door hinges with tea. The result was gorgeous. I wished that I had made more of these pieces, but I only had one. As my ideas evolved I decided that I wanted to create more than one collage so I could present my work as a group of ideas instead of one big piece. I bought three canvases and placed my fabric pieces on to them which involved batik deigns, photo to fabric transfers, and painted fabric, some machine stitch over the batik and some hand stitch also. When placed in the desired positions I then filled in the gaps with plaster moulding roll which works by placing in water and then fitting onto the canvas. When dry paint may be applied. I used acrylic paint over the plaster mould. Basically I wanted my collages to speak but without coming across as 'in yer face'. If my artwork appears to be a collection of fabrics and nothing else than that is fine but I also want a meaning to my work, if the observer is looking for one.

Final Pieces for Marks in The Landscape

Below are my final pieces for Textiles in Art. Basically they are collages made from different fabric and designs including batik, image maker designs, handmade designs on fabric with paint using a roller, rusted fabric, and some machine and hand stitch. I also included acrylic paints and the use of a plaster moulding roll which works by wetting the plaster mould and then placing it onto the canvas. After drying paint may be applied.
Below are photographs of my collages which are meant to represent the social and economic mood of the landscape.

Jennifer Solon: Mixed Media And Textile Artist

Searching for inspiration, I have come across Jennifer Solon who I believe is a very talented mixed media artist. Originally working with fabrics Jennifer has transformed her work to that of mixed media incorporating paints, pigments and waxes into layers.
Her work involves the use of hand dyed textiles, digital imagery, papers and paint. She has been described as an improvisational artist who works on her own intuition and thrives on play and experimentation.
Jennifer's uses the relationship between colour, shape and texture in her art.

Handpainted Barcodes

I have recently been playing around with a few ideas for the final project for Textile Art and have sketched examples in my sketchbook. The latest idea for Marks in the Landscape involve the bar code as I'm using the economy and social attitude and mood of the country and landscape for my final piece.
I have painted these barcodes using heat sensitive fabric paint which I bought from HobbyCraft. Firstly I attempted to create a semi decayed/rusty/mouldy background and then painted the bar code over the top. These pieces will now need to be ironed so as to bond together the paint with the fabric.

Textile Art: Ideas For The Final Piece

Just the phrase 'final piece' is now starting to cause a slight shiver down my spine. However fun textile Art sessions have been, it is now getting serious and I'm still not 100% sure how I am going to do what I think I'm going to attempt. Never the less in the class I decided to use some of the batik pieces I made during an earlier Textile session. Firstly I chose a couple of photo's of close up walls revealing a pattern of some kind. I then machine stitched over the fabric using the darning foot so as to resemble the pattern in some way.
I realise that I may need to create several small pieces so I can choose the best ones to add to one larger collage or mixed-media piece of art.

Textile Art 3D Session

For our last Textile Art session we were shown a number of pictures of unusually shaped buildings and told to replicate one of them into a 3D piece of art. 
This proved particularly difficult as the project we were working on involved sphere like objects and our first attempt to create a 3D sphere by intertwining wire and covering with fabric failed.
However after realising that we would need to create several circles first and then stitch them together things started to progress.
Here's how we did it: Firstly we bent wire into a circle and then both machine stitched and hand stitched fabric around the wire. After this and to save time we used paper and stuck the paper around the wire. When we had at least twelve circles we started to stitch the circles together forming one larger sphere.