Textile artists working with nature's textures
This post looks at three artists whose work is inspired by nature and reflects its textures.
Vanessa Barragao is a Portuguese textile artist whose work is made up of beautiful organic shapes and textures. She uses a variety of techniques - latch hook, crochet, felt, weaving, embroidery and macrame. Her website describes how her art comes from concerns about consumption and sustainability. She uses waste yarn and deadstock and uses hand processes.
She talks about the process of creating her work as 'organic' and the result being 'unknown and unpredictable'. She references her inspiration as the degradation of coral reefs. Her work is a reaction to over-consumption and the pollution that is created by the fashion industry serving and stimulating this desire. She uses her work to communicate about the need to change our behaviour and that of the fashion industry that drives it, and reverse the damage and pollution caused by it.
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| Dunas I, Vanessa Barragao |
The fact that Vanessa's work evolves as she works reassured me that it is acceptable to see how things grow and develop. Whilst I had a draft plan for my design, the modular element of the design meant that as I tried techniques my work adapted and evolved.
I used more needle felting and less needle punch than I planned. Whilst the moss-like texture of the needle punch was surprisingly realistic and creates a tactile texture, I really liked the more abstract outcome of the needle felting plus the ability to use waste materials effectively.
Meredith Woolnough is an Australian artist who produces intricate embroideries inspired by and replicating organic structures. I became aware of her work following a suggestion from another student as part of an early feedback session on our 'habitat' project work. Meredith's embroidery gave me ideas of how I could develop my moss cell embroidery (right hand image) into a larger work or expand out the subject matter to create different textures and patterns.
Looking back at her work in detail, it generates ideas of how I could have extended the use of machine embroidery and perhaps used it as a more central technique in my piece for Saltaire. Instead, I chose to focus more on hand-embroidery techniques. I also chose not to use polyester threads and hence the metallic embroidery was not developed further. However, I would like to revisit Meredith's work as inspiration although I think a steadier machine embroidery hand will be needed.
The third artist is Zena Holloway whose root sculptures developed from a reaction to the plastic pollution that she observed in her work as an underwater photographer. As part of an investigation into alternatives to plastic, she discovered the fast growing root system of wheatgrass and that by growing these into a beeswax mould she creates lace-like structures. Her website describes these sculptures as showing 'the power of plants is infinitely renewable and nature’s amazing capabilities are simply waiting for us to tap into'.
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