I work with found and re-used textiles, using crochet and spinning to make colourful, layered, tactile sculptures that reflect organic forms. I focus on traditional crafting techniques to challenge the digital advances of the modern-day environment, portraying delicacy, strength and fluidity through soft materials. Wool allows me to capture the qualities of natural forms to create vibrant ecosystems that juxtapose each other and spool across the floor and walls.

 

My process allows freedom within my sculptures, allowing the idea of ‘thinking through making’ to inform my decisions. Gravity is seen through the pouring, drooping or exhausted appearance of some of the forms that fall or pool. My sculpture ‘Ecosystem’ focuses on the deflated islands of barnacles connected by coloured tubes. The labour-intensive material manipulation reflects organic arrangements, creating shapes through knots and loops. For example, tubes connecting and sucking the life from the bleached neutral-coloured barnacles into a vibrant globe as a metaphor of the damage we’re doing to our planet. 

 

Using my hands allows me to feel the medium through my fingers, focusing on the tactility and softness of the wool, while the repetitive rhythm of production becomes therapeutic. The malleability of the wool gives me the freedom I seek. It allows me to produce work, either with intentions to juxtapose differing elements to create an ‘ecosystem’ or to separate elements as stand-alone subjects. The simplicity of using wool and a crochet hook allows me to develop and change my work as I choose, often with ideas forming as I work leading me onto ideas for other projects.

 

Elements of nature and unpredictability are explored in my work, linking back to how nature can be uncertain and surprising: how it acts and what it produces. The uncertainty and fragility of nature, the time it can take for organisms to grow, this is reflected in my work by how the pull or tear of a thread can unravel each form. I show this uncertainty through change in textures, by varying wool thicknesses and colours. 

 

The bleached barnacles represent the damage of rising sea temperatures causing coral reefs to die and lose their colour. Earth is suffering the backlash of our industrialised and polluting actions. The textile industry unfortunately contributes significantly to world-wide pollution. Therefore, my choice to reuse wool from what I can repurpose or find in charity shops is a conscious decision to minimise my environmental impact and to avoid today’s consumerism culture. I also use my spinning wheel to connect to the raw materials further linking my practice directly to old practices and the land, and what nature can provide.

 

My work references the use of natural forms and repetitive techniques used within the Arts and Crafts Movement, such as William Morris who used printing blocks to create identical prints. I’ve been influenced by textile artists such as Sheila Hicks for monumental displays and her awareness of textile’s potential, and Vanessa Barragão for her flamboyant coastal landscapes. Barragão also collects wool from old textile mills, so that her work is consciously made, too.​

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May 2022