Textile artists using Knitting

i have many articles and books on knitting, in particular Ruth Lee's 'Contemporary Knitting' is a great source of inspiration. i have used some of her techniques in my samples previously posted.
there are a lot of artists using knit at the moment and i found it difficult not to go wild! however i have chosen a few that appeal to the quirky side of me and to their techniques some of which i experimented with in my chapter on knitting. i first came across Susie Freeman i think just after she had graduated when a friend asked me to make her wedding dress using some of Susie's fabric. it was great to be presented with a huge roll of this knitted construction and then realise i had to cut it to go into a 'v' at the centre front waistline!!! anyway it turned out beautifully. i also attended a couple of Knit days at the V&A organised by John Allen, this is where i discovered Nora Fok and Jan Truman. Nora has a touring exhibition on at the moment so do check it out, they are beautiful creations.
Rhian Solomon, Adrienne Sloane
Marie-Rose Lortet i encountered in a book on 'Outsider Art' i believe she is self taught, there is nothing traditional about her work which is why it is so fresh.
thought i had better include some 'outdoor' work in keeping with my graffiti theme.Suzumi noda, Super Blue, Fay McCaul uses fibre optics to knit with.

The Door - proposal for hanging/panel

i have been monitoring this door for a few years now! it is a back door to my local library where various people 'hang out' and sometimes it smells quite savoury or un!!! initially it started with a few words/splodges etc and gradually layers built up and although it looked a bit of a mess i quite liked it .
although it was random the colours worked and you could work out some of the individual layers.
as a conservator i am quite interested in the idea behind 'how things were made', discovering their history and analysing their materials. with graffiti, layers are often built up, painted over/white washed, and painted over again. so the phrase 'you don't know it but its still there' has stuck in my mind. the council's anti graffiti unit has since made a complete hash of the door by trying to remove the graffiti! so it isn't there anymore!
i started working out some of the letter layers on tracing paper with the intention of building something up, taking samples and embedding them in resin (like analysing paint layers). i love the lettering, individual words and shapes so i am not sure how far to adjust them to my own design or whether i can simply 'borrow' them.
i would use a basic range of colours taken from the door as well as retroflective and phosphorescent threads and use a combination of cotton organdie and cellophane for my semi/transparent layers.
as the graffiti is drawn by hand i want to recreate the colours with a mixture of stencils, sandwiched items and hand stitch, working randomly within the desired shapes.


after many thoughts, ideas and designs i have come up with this. the initial piece would be directly in proportion to the original door and at the moment cut up systematically. although i have also thought of just taking a few samples and leaving the original as a hanging and ending up with 2 pieces. the samples would be laid on their sides and stuck into resin so part sticks out. i would then arrange them as a linked hanging. although i haven't totally got rid of the idea of turning it from a hanging to a panel. thought i would get feedback first.

Chapter 10 Option B 'folded cut lace'

this option develops the use of stencils to create designs. Using paper folded and cut with shapes various 'doily' designs were created. the shapes i used were letters, arrows and random torn shapes. 'faces' above was based on the wonderful letters i used in the 'edge' chapter. i concertina'd the paper randomly to get a repeat that was not uniform. much to my surprise i created a row of faces which looked quite graffiti like. for this one i used 2 stencils, the background of folded and torn holes. i used spray paint, chalk pastels, markal paint sticks, acrylic paint and a new find 'uni posca' pens which give a brilliant colour. the pink and green lines above. i transferred the cut designs from thin paper to card which was easier to work with.
'letters' above uses 2 stencils and only parts of them. again using the same materials.
'y's' similar to 'letters'
'm' using both positive and negative stencils.
'flower' using 3 stencils randomly placed.
'arrows' not so pleased with this one but it has a certain 1950's look. i used biro to give a more lacy appearance to the arrows.
'grin' was based on an actual doily folded and cut randomly. it was quite difficult to use this as it was very flimsy to stencil over.
i also worked various strips using the stencils, cut pieces from the stencils and the stencils themselves to create stripes. top stripe uses an actual stencil with pieces cut from the doily. next one down another stencil made from 'The Radio Times' and cut outs looped through it. the lower one using just stencils.
this last one shows top created with positive and negative stencils with cutout bits of photos. next one down uses various sizes of arrow both positive and negative and cut outs. i still have a section designing on the computer but that will follow.

Hidden Treasures of Indian Art

I know Sian has sent an email to all Diploma students, but anyone else out there who is interested. What could be an interesting programme is on BBC2 this Friday 11th March at 9.00pm. Presented by Griff Rhys Jones; he is looking at the textile and embroidery traditions of India.