Weave: A One Day Symposium: Stroud International Textiles, 11th May

Weave: A One Day Symposium: Stroud International Textiles

Helga Matos

SPRING SELECT APRIL 27 – 26 MAY 2013
Presented by Stroud International Textiles

Saturday 11 May 2013
‘Weave’  is a one day conference will bring together a diverse group of experts to explore weaving and woven structures. The day will discuss how weaving has progressed and developed while continuing to delight in traditional textiles skills.

Confirmed contributor speakers are Laura Thomas; Nadia-Anne Ricketts; Eleanor Pritchard; Tim Parry-Williams; Deirdre Woods; Helga Matos. Philippa Brock (Chair);

These are inspirational designer makers who test the boundaries of textile material and experiment with how far those boundaries can be pushed. The work they produce is exciting, beautiful, intelligent and inspiring.

The day will bring opportunities for makers and designers to contribute their specialist skills and knowledge of materials and encourage new systems and processes. The day will explore and discuss new techniques while basking in the pleasure of woven cloth.

Each contributor strives to push the expected boundaries of woven textile working with design, architects, fashion, science and interior design
Tickets:
Full price £70
Concessions full time students, unemployed and Friends of SIT £40
Early Bird Tickets: Full Price £60 Students Early Bird £35
Early Bird tickets end on March 30

This includes a light lunch and tea/coffee on arrival.
Advance booking through www.sitselect.org symposium booking page.

A bookshop run by Yellow-Lighted Books will be present.

Booking
To book a ticket please go to www.sitselect.org or www.stroudinternationaltextiles.org.uk and navigate to the symposium page where you will find full details on how to book online or if you prefer you can send a cheque to SIT office.
Or book through Tourist Information centre on 01453 760 960

Venue: Stroud College in Gloucestershire GL5 4AH
Contact Stroud International Textiles on 01453 751056 / info@stroudsit.org

Eleanor Pritchard

Tim Parry Williams

Weave Waves, a collaboration between Scanner and Ismini Samanidou

Crafts Council commission – Weave Waves - brings together sound artist Scanner and textile designer Ismini Samanidou to explore the connections between craft and sound.

Weave Waves has been commissioned for the Crafts Council’s new touring exhibition Sound Matters: Exploring sound through forms, launching in May 2013, which looks at how and where the worlds of sound and craft collide.

The dynamic online space – www.weavewaves.org.uk – will show the process of the collaboration between Scanner and Ismini Samandiou via ‘chapters’ which will be uploaded weekly.

Scanner and Samanidou have been inspired by the visual and technical similarities between the digital software they use and the physicality of code used both in music and weaving.

Samanidou recognises code as tactile and visible and Scanner sees code as hidden and veiled beneath the surface but they both use a shared language of zeros and ones – of binary code.

A presentation of their collaboration to date will be shown at FutureEverything in Manchester at 4 Piccadilly Place, from 21-24 March.

This presentation at FutureEverything will be in the form of a film and sound piece driven by their shared interests in scale and location and includes a mapping of the urban environment and soundscape of Manchester.

Following Weave Waves at FutureEverything there will be a series of conversations and interviews broadcast on Resonance FM (London 104.4 FM) and available online, which will focus on the artists and makers featured in Sound Matters, including Scanner and Samanidou.


Visiting Weave Waves at FutureEverything

4 Piccadilly Place
Manchester
M1 3BN

Wednesday 20 March*: 9-7pm
Thursday 21 March: 9-6pm
Friday 22 March: 9-7pm
Saturday 23 March: 10-6pm
Sunday 24 March: 10-6pm

*FutureEverything runs from 21-24 March however there will be an opportunity to see Weave Waves on Wednesday 20 March.

Weave Waves is a FREE event

About Scanner

Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner, is a conceptual artist, writer and musician working in London. He explores the experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form, creating absorbing, multi-layered sound pieces that twist technology in unconventional ways.

www.scannerdot.com @robinrimbaud

About Ismini Samanidou

Ismini Samanidou designs woven fabrics for interior spaces, ranging from one-off pieces to limited edition textiles. Technology is an integral part of her creative process, her pieces woven mainly on industrial computerised looms.

www.isminisamanidou.com

About FutureEverything

FutureEverything is an art and digital innovation organization based in Manchester, founded in 1995 around an annual festival of art, music and digital culture. The award-winning organisation runs year-round digital innovation labs on themes such as open data, remote collaboration, urban interface and environmental mass observation. The FutureEverything festival each year presents the work of 300 artists across its art, music and conference strands, and is conceived as a ‘living lab’ for participatory experiments on art, society and technology.

In March 2013, FutureEverything presents the Summit of Ideas & Digital Invention, a one-off event that has been designed to showcase a wide range of digital innovation projects from international artists and developers as well as hosting their annual conference. In preparation for the 20th Anniversary of FutureEverything in 2015, the Summit in March and the next festival in 2014 have been designed specifically to demonstrate that at its core, FutureEverything is about innovation in all forms, be it in research, digital media or contemporary arts and music.

www.futureeverything.org @FuturEverything #futr

About Sound Matters

Sound Matters is the newest Crafts Council touring exhibition. It will explore the connections between craft and sound, investigating how and where they collide. It will feature the work of seven makers/artists that are seeking to explore and expand the boundaries of sound and craft. Musician and author David Toop is curatorial advisor for the exhibition which will launch in May 2013.

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/about-us/press-room/view/2013/weave-waves-explores-craft-and-sound/ 

Feasibility Study: Weave sampling & short runs facility

I am currently undertaking some research for a feasibility study into providing support services to the weave sector. I have compiled a short survey aimed at designer-makers and small businesses and I would be hugely grateful if you could fill in should you fall into these categories.


I know how pressurized everyone's time is, but I hope that the information gleaned from this survey will help secure funding for a much-needed weave facility which could directly benefit UK-based weave businesses in the future.

I am working to an very tight timescale to submit this feasibility study and so I would be extremely appreciative to receive your valuable answers, by this coming Saturday 16^th March.

Please do forward this info onto anyone you think might be interested and keen to offer their thoughts.

Many thanks.

Eduardo and Maria Portillo

Detail of Nocturno

Nocturno

Yesterday I received these images by email from the extraordinarily talented Eduardo and Maria Portillo, and they quite frankly, made my heart skip a beat. The images show their work that is in a current exhibition 'Azul Indigo' in Caracas celebrating their exquisite use of indigo dying. But its not just about dying: the weave structures and dramatic yarn combinations take the colour exploration to another level. The work is utterly absorbing both from afar and up close: I love the way the ordered grid structure ripples, undulates and surprises as a result of the different yarn characters. 

The artworks aim to capture the various shades of blue that take us through the day; from the inky midnight blue sky, to a sky laden with rain, to the transparent air of the afternoon tinged with golden sunlight.

The exhibition is on until the 27th January. Sadly I won't be able to indulge myself with a trip to Caracas, but should you be nearby, you must go and savour this exhibition.... 

Detail of Nubes

En la Noche 

Detail of En la Noche 

Al Amanecer

Detail of Al Amanecer

Detai lof La Noche

The artists image reflected in an indigo dye vat

UPDATE, 15th March 2013

Here is some text that Eduardo and Maria have sent me translated from the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. Enjoy.....

 

A Blue Journey

by María Dávila & Eduardo Portillo

Blue, color of multiple meanings, is also the color of hope. Every day dawns and the blue accompanies us in the sky, in the sea and in the distant mountains.

We see the blue in the morning but  in the  afternoon shows transparent with yellow and white. At night it darkens and with the moonlight follows a blue air. With the stars, in the morning, when it's almost dawn, the blue is still there.

Ten years ago, in 2002, when we found the indigo blue and draw travel lines to see the color of the peoples of Southeast Asia, of  the desert´s blue men , the Andean textiles and blue jeans, the eternal blue.

Indigo is obtained from various plants containing "indican" and Indigofera tinctoria L is the most used. As it is  insoluble in water, requiring an alkaline medium and a reducing agent to become soluble. When the vat takes an amber appearance, the fiber is immersed there, extracted  and with the air contact indigo oxidize to become  blue color.

In ancient times, due to its complex preparation process, the indigo vat was restricted to the hands of specialists. Its transformation from yellow-green to infinite variety blues was full of  magic and rigor.

In Venezuela still grows wild the indigo plant which was the base of an important industry for the country in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

In the highlands of Mérida there remains the memory of using this dye in wool blankets.

The discovery of synthetic indigo in 1880 revolutionized the way to obtain the blue in the world, in a few years replacing the use of natural indigo.

Today indigo culture remains in traditional communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America and in a wide universe of contemporary artists who see in its process a synthesis of history, culture and life.

In the mountains of southwest China, where the golden evening light bathes their endless   and steep terraces planted with rice, Dong people wears blue, almost black, their cotton fabrics dyed in indigo that seems to become waterproof paper after going through a slow and fascinating process of immersion in the juice of some plants and systematic exposure to the sun.

In northeast Thailand, indigo is full of superstition and alchemy. In every home the recipe for its preparation is different, secret ; add brown sugar, pineapple, tamarind, liquor, prove it, smell it, they keep it "alive". There all hands are blue; for a moment everything is blue.

In southern India still there are some indigo plantations, where the rhythmic "dance" of blue bodies in pools of indigo oxygenates the obtained extract , which should be processed until the dye is achieved.

In the Andes, in Africa and Japan, the art, study, research, trial and error are present in every indigo vat. To travel in search for Indigo  could be itself  a motive for a lifetime, every "vat" is different, each vision is unique, we  decided to try to find our own blue. After this intense experience, we interlaced the blue with our searchs and then brought them into the loom.

After a necessary pause we have resumed the pleasure found years ago, exploring the art of indigo dyeing, immersed in their vats again and over again, and we brought it to textiles structures that move us to get closer to blue moments of everyday: the night, the moon, the sky, the clouds, dawn, dusk, moments of everybody, moments filled with blue.

We have tried to fuse into the blue  the silk from Mérida, moriche palm from the Orinoco river´s delta, the wool of the Andes, and cotton, dyed in indigo and complementing it with other natural sources of color (cochineal, eucalyptus and onion) and with metallic yarns.

The space is constructed using blocks and mosaics born from triple weave , which is based on the interlacement of three layers of warp yarns advancing simultaneously and independently  while is weaving each one of them, therefore it should be weave three times the length  of the fabric obtained.

The various combinations of blues are revealed by Taqueté, an ancient textile structure , based on the sequences of  three or four colors yarn groups in the weft or in the warp

Today we celebrate the encounter, a blue vision of the world, a vision about the universal indigo blue, navigating the collective imaginary of some moments of the day and we endevour to get them into the space of the wide textile world.-

Dec 2012

W&Q

How exciting is this?! I can't tell you how much I just love this work: some of my favourite preoccupations of saturated colour, graphic patterns and triaxial weave constructions have been explored to such dramatic effect by this wonderful new design duo W&Q. They have taken an entirely fresh approach to traditional bamboo woven furniture which has so much market potential..... I can't wait to see this work available commercially. Do check out their website for lots more inspiring images.

Jason Collingwood

Jason Collingwood is a master rug weaver of international repute, in demand for both his work and his teaching. He hand-weaves wonderfully graphic designs that have gravitas and great visual impact. Do check out his online gallery, as he has a huge catalogue of inspiring designs that can be commissioned in whatever colours you might choose. These are some of my personal favourites......

Linda Green

I first saw Linda Greens work at the brilliant Follow a Thread exhibition at Ruthin Craft Centre. It was one of the best exhibitions I'd ever seen celebrating textiles, which saw me visit and revisit the show time and time again. One of the bodies of work that kept drawing me back was the exquisite 'Exploring Structure' series by Linda, a tapestry graduate of the Royal College of Art and Edinburgh College of Art.

A series of 21 miniature woven studies were created on pieces of found wood, shells and other ephemera upon which the textile remained. It's a delightful depiction of the fact that to weave, you just need 'something' to hold your warp threads taught, for you to then interlace the weft over and under. I love the fact that the 'loom' is not only a functional tool, but an imperative part of the resultant textile artwork. The series was displayed in a linear landscape arrangement, propped up on a shelf against a wall, and the pieces seemed to just dance from one to another. The tiny scale commanded you to look closely and appreciate the minutiae of the fibre and yarn surface in a way that you'd otherwise overlook.

The exhibition toured to Dovecot after it left Ruthin Craft Craft Centre, and you can see some more images of Linda's work in situ, as well as some of the other exhibits on the Innovative Craft Flickr photostream