Starting with the most recent, this is a portfolio of work I have completed over the last 3 years as a Textile Practices student at Arts University Plymouth.
Waives & Waves
This is my final major project, a collection of trims and wallpaper designs developed as refinement of a previous project and inspired by the work of Nick Hayes and Derek Lerner.
Artist Statement. ( specific to this project)
Kirstin is motivated by the desire to adorn and enhance the ordinary and every day. Passmenterie is an old and endangered craft and she is excited to discover ways to contemporise this heritage skill by designing a range of trims that can be used individually or in combination. Waives & Waves is a personal project inspired by her visceral experience as a keen open water swimmer, of being literally immersed in nature. The technical data vital to that activity is harnessed to create graphic patterns from tide tables, marine charts, weather forecasts, pollution reports and surf predictions. Kirstin uses the traditional craft of Passmenterie to express her vision. She combines pattern creation using ordered repetitive processes of weaving and sewing with the less predictable results of hand dyeing techniques and micro pleating. The effect, when also using less conventional materials, truly encapsulates her experience of her watery outdoor adventures. Waives & Waves elevates the everyday in our homes, adding compelling finishing touches. Kirstin wants you to be excited and able to add your own flourishes that enhance and adorn your surroundings in a multiplicity of colourful and tactile ways.
Waives & Waves
hello@kirstintaylor.works
Kirstin is motivated by the desire to adorn and enhance the ordinary and every day. Passmenterie is an old and endangered craft and she is excited to discover ways to contemporise this heritage skill by designing a range of trims that can be used individually or in combination. Waives & Waves is a personal project inspired by her visceral experience as a keen open water swimmer, of being literally immersed in nature. The technical data vital to that activity is harnessed to create graphic patterns from tide tables, marine charts, weather forecasts, pollution reports and surf predictions. Kirstin uses the traditional craft of Passmenterie to express her vision. She combines pattern creation using ordered repetitive processes of weaving and sewing with the less predictable results of hand dyeing techniques and micro pleating. The effect, when also using less conventional materials, truly encapsulates her experience of her watery outdoor adventures. Waives & Waves elevates the everyday in our homes, adding compelling finishing touches. Kirstin wants you to be excited and able to add your own flourishes that enhance and adorn your surroundings in a multiplicity of colourful and tactile ways.
Waives & Waves
hello@kirstintaylor.works
Project Statement of Intent
Continuing the theme of a previous project I am extending my research of place, which in this instance is Water. I am intending to concentrate more on the organised information I use to inform my choice to swim and how to incorporate this into my initial drawing. I am looking at the work of Derek Lerner, an artist who investigates the relationship we have with organised systems, the humanistic and the controlled. His work inspires me, he has a way of combining organic shapes with linear, geometric elements that create map like drawings, all drawn in blue ink in a variation of intensity and texture. They remind me of marine charts that hold information about buoy locations, seabed substrates, restricted speed areas etc. I have also been stimulated by the work of Nick Hayes, an illustrator who reworked a classic poem in his book The Rime of the Modern Mariner, making it pertinent to current environmental and societal topics that concern and affect my activities as an outdoor swimmer. His version addresses the pollution of our seas and how we live in “a world detached of consequence” and it is so beautifully and emotively illustrated that it is very hard to dismiss the ugliness of our carelessness towards our planet. As with Lerner’s work the colour palette of this book is restricted, using just blue, black and white, and I think this absolutely enhances the poignancy and integrity of the poem and emphasises the powerful and deceptively simple style of Hayes’s illustrations. It is my ambition to produce a range of trims for use within the interiors market for conventional and more adventurous outputs. The weaving process of Passimenterie, an orthodox discipline used to manufacture braids, tassels and fringing, offers an opportunity to explore the introduction of unusual elements to a traditional craft, playing with scale, texture, construction and application. Elizabeth Ashdown is a contemporary practitioner of passimenterie and has recently co-curated the Experimental Weave Lab in the City of London which offered a 6 month programme aiming ‘ to explore the experimental, interstitial spaces that weavers work within throughout UK craft, research, art, design and industry.’ She has also been awarded some funding by Heritage Crafts to finance her further training with Expert Passimenterie practitioner Clare Hedges in an effort to help preserve this endangered craft skill. William Storms is another artist who is trained in weaving arts having spent a year at ENSI-Les Ateliers in Paris on a scholarship, ‘ I was immersed in the the art of French Passimenterie and jacquard- learning techniques that dated back to 19th Century Versailles.’ Storms now uses this training to create innovative large scale woven installations that include unusual components such as speaker wire, acrylic tubing and even cigarettes! His work is exhibited in public spaces, galleries and included in private collections around the world. I would like to include components in my trims that are sewn, dyed, knitted, recycled and repurposed. I aim to play with texture and movement and with that in mind intend to keep my colour palette very simple with shades of blue being predominant. I feel too many colours will distract from the intricacies of the woven construction which I want to be prominent in the finished product. I shall initially experiment with indigo dye and natural and acid dye blues before making a final decision on a process for producing my colour. I will add silver as a highlight, introducing this in the form of thread, yarn, foil and crystal. |