Keep your integrity

I sometimes find it very hard to stay true to myself, especially within an academic environment where you know that you are going to be marked on something. I think ultimately though, you have to go with what you believe in and not lose your integrity to please someone else. Someone who agrees with this is John C Jay in his 10 tips for young designers. Amen to this.

Work in Progress

A trace can be defined as a 'track or mark left behind; a sign of what has existed or occurred' (Oxford Dictionary, 1991: 341)

Through this work I have begun to explore the traces that are left behind over time and challenge society's perception of them. I have worked with stained textiles which have been donated to me, items which their owners no longer thought beautiful.

I have looked to nature for inspiration, particularly how over time surface in nature become consumed by fungus, lichen, moss and ivy. This to me is directly representational to that of a textile surface. Through day to day life they pick up stain and wear in certain areas. I have use my observations of nature as subject matter for my designs- printing images of moss over stained areas of cloth.

As I am concerned with the emotional durability of textiles I have given myself the challenge of making stained and worn textiles beautiful again by printing with natural staining substances such as blueberry, blackberry and turmeric. I wish to develop these processes further, testing in particular their permanence and how they fade over time.

Slow and steady

I started reading a book by Carl Honore called in praise of slow. It is a really interesting observation of how we live at ever increasing paces of life and he suggests that this can have detrimental effects on every aspect of our lives. He claims that we have lost the ability to do nothing and just contemplate. We can no longer just stare aimlessly out of train windows but have to busy ourselves with books, newspaper, phones. The irony of this is that I am currently sitting on a train writing this. However I am partial to staring out a window too, and sometimes I even get the stopping train for this exact reason; to stare out the window and be deep in thought. Honore emphasises that the Slow Movement isn't about doing nothing, its about finding balance in your life and not losing sight of the fact that some things require time to be taken over them.

This is exactly how I feel about my work. Its exploratory, requires a lot of research and thought and its not about producing hundreds of designs. Its about craft and value in textiles and making people slow down and think.
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