Joanna Vasconcelos

Today Alice, Grace and I went to Manchester Art Gallery as we had decided that we needed a lot more visual, tangible research and inspiration to really be able to push our project further. This led to going to visit the Joanna Vasconcelos 'Time Machine' exhibition, which was extremely inspirational. What the group and I specifically found we could relate the exhibition and our own work was the vast colour that has been used and the array of textures used. There was a new texture or colour at every different angle you looked at her sculptures; this is something we would like to reiterate in our own work.

Daniel Heath

Todays lecture has been one of my favourite so far. Daniel Heath was really interesting and had some great advice for us. He even came back to the studio and we had an invaluable conversation that we were all grateful for. He gave us advice on always taking high quality images of our work and keeping up to date with it as it is important that you always have images to hand to show prospect customers and press interests. This also makes it easier for the press and they are more likely to give you more coverage.

Daniel Heath for Heals

He also told us the importance of getting your name out there, and the fact that every project may not be lucrative but they can always lead to more work which is always a bonus. Also about the production of 'gateway products' such as cushions. If someone buys one of your cushions they are more likely to buy a mirror to match or the wallpaper that is also part of that collection.

Daniel Heath for Retrouvius

Freelance design has never crossed my mind however the idea of a more 'organic journey' after university rather than working for someone sounds amazing. Being able to design for yourself without restriction and controlling which jobs you do and do not do. However the most important advice I feel he gave us was BE PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE.

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry is one of the most important contemporary architect of our time. He has designed a number of buildings including the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim - Bilboa. It has been joked that he scrumples up a piece of paper, see's what shape it lands in and uses that as his design idea. As in some of his designs it does look like they could fall down at any moment, however also looking extremely well built at the same time. I have chosen to look into Frank Gehry for his forward thinking way of design. His buildings are like nothing I have ever seen, and as I have just recently visited Salford Quays it seemed only right to look further into the architect. He uses metal to reflect the sky, which everyday creates a different shade and shadow so it feels like you are never seeing the same building twice. It looks different from every angle and is in no way symmetrical. I want to take on board some of these theories and incorporate them into my own work.

Tim Fowler

Throughout my project I have been continuously searching for artists and designers who relate to my work. I have found a Fine Artist, Tim Fowler, who's main focus is urban environments. Although his work is not textiles, I still appreciate the art and the thought process behind the work as it is very similar to that of my own throughout this project. Also in some of his drawing I can see my own colour palette coming through which is interesting.

'My paintings are partially recognizable images, which I like to distort with strong colour and abstract elements. I try to capture something deeper and more personal, as apposed to literal representation.' Tim Fowler

This is an interesting quote from Fowler, he works in a similar style to myself. My own work can literalise the object but also has a sense of expression within it.

Alice Kettle

The Transformative Power of Thread

Today we had a guest lecturer, Textiles Practitioner Alice Kettle. Alice specialises in embroidery which is not something I am overly keen on personally so I felt that the lecture was not very relevant to myself. However she did speak a lot about getting commissions and being a freelancer so it did give me an insight into a possible career path I could take in the future.

Alice takes inspiration from stories that she feels relate to her life somehow or that have thread involved within them. I find her way of finding inspiration quite interesting as I have not heard of anything like that before. Her commissions are on rather large scales such as 16 metre embroidered images. Something I did find interesting in the lecture was when she collaborated with Pushpa Kumari and they began to draw by using a single thread dipped in ink to create line. I may try to use this technique to experiment more and to see what effects I could get with this technique.

Maurizio Anzeri

After the last tutorial, the rest of the group and I were really keen to look into stitching into the photographs that we had already taken to create a more textured, 3D feel to the photography. I have been looking further into this over the past week and have found some interesting works by Maurizio Anzeri. He is a Graphic Designer who collects images from flea markets and car boot sales, he never actually knows the subject in his work.

"His embroidered patterns garnish the figures like elaborate costumes, but also suggest a psychological aura, as if revealing the person’s thoughts or feelings." 

The above images have been taken from a piece that Maurizio helped out on for Dazed and Confused magazine. He did not take the photographs, he just contributed the stitch to an already styled shoot. I much prefer this work than his work with vintage photographs, it is sleeker and more contemporary. 

I have found Maurizio's work very inspiring, to me the stitch looks very Spirographic. The geometric stitch is juxtaposed by the vintage photographs used as a back drop. The stitching actually transforms the photographs and almost changed the character of the subject. My group are looking at distorting the face however I like the concept of 'defacing' the face.

Satin Stitch

I have drew a small drawing of a little girl in fine liner, I have then used some embroidery thread to stitch into the image. This was inspired by an artist named Hagar van hu, whom I found on Pinterest. Their way of working has really appealed to me throughout this project as I feel it links to a lot of the criteria that our group is trying to reach. Portraiture, distortion and covering the face. This is just a basic idea at the moment but I would like to discuss this further with the group in our next tutorial, bringing in the ideas of 3D and texture.

To take this idea further, it could be done on a much larger scale, on a number of different materials and textures, and also in many colour ways. This is all down to experimentation which I plan on carrying out in the upcoming days left of the project. However, our group is yet to settle on an idea for a final piece, so I will act quickly on this experimentation in order to settle on a final piece soon.

Continuation of Work

So yesterday I posted about the pastiche I was doing, I have sort of finished the piece, I did not complete the full thing as I felt the idea was translated well already and it was just an initial piece to showcase an idea that I had about creating texture within an image by stitching into it.

I dont think that this is one of the best pieces of work that I have done but it certainly portrays the concept. The concept of expression really stands out to me here. The group and I have spoken about the idea of expression, using more peculiar facial expressions than general model-like poses. We have discussed the idea of covering the face or highlighting certain areas of the face, which I will no explore. Instead of using machine stitch I am going to look into hand embroidery to see if I can create a softer texture.

Making Progress

I really feel like I am starting to make some progress finally within this unit! It has taken a while but slowly but surely it is coming along. I have dug out my sewing machine and made a start on my pastiche of  Nikos Gyftakis' work. It is coming along a lot better than I expected. The only struggle I am having so far is the heaviness of my lines and the contrast between light and dark. The face is quite hard to copy as the skin is stretched into every direction possible, so to keep one fluid line is also quite difficult. This is an image of the progress that I have made so far, I will post an image later when I have completely finished the piece.

I think that the fingers have worked the best throughout this process, however I do need to define these more, as I have only used three of the 5 colours I plan to use. It's not perfect, but it is a start! I really like the texture that this technique creates, however for me, it is not polished enough. I have also been looking into distorting the face, using my scanner at home I scanned a few images of my face to see what the outcome would be like. The final images are slightly strange and I do not think I will be taking this any further.

Sketchbook Work

I have been looking into a few different artists, which I have mentioned on my blog before, today I have been looking further into Nikos Gyftakis, like I said before the use of colour and expressive fluid lines really spoke to my style of work. I have attempted to recreate his way of working. The outcomes are better than I expected however still need improvement. To develop this work further I am going to try recreate his work using the sewing machine, creating the lines with stitches and the couching technique. I plan to do this as I feel it links to my textile course a lot more than what my group are doing at the moment.

Allison Diaz

Today I managed to get to the library and print off a lot of imagery that I have been meaning to get for a while now. Allowing me finally get some work down into my sketch book. I have started by looking into our initial idea about the 175 project, taking photographs of peoples faces. So I found a artist named Allison Diaz. I have been stalking her blog today and found out a lot about the images I found of her work.

The meaning behind what she has done is really intriguing and interesting and really challenges you to think deeper into the photographs. This leads me into our Unit X project, we could ask the person in the image what they think their most recognisable feature is, what they like/ hate about themselves most, or even what is the first thing they see when looking at someone? I tried Allison's technique with just two images that I had collected. I think the outcome works well, however I am interested to see how three images could look like with different races, ages and genders in the mix.

Stitch & Photography

So my group have decided to go down more a photography route.. so i have been looking at ways in which I can still incorporate my style into the images and maybe enhance/ distort the images. I found this great images from Hagar Van Hu on Pinterest. The artist has used stitch to distort the image and enhance it. I love the first images of the faces, as our group plans on hiding the face/ exaggerating something that the person in the image does not like about themselves. I just thought this idea was quite different to what we have been currently looking at and slightly more on my level.

Zero-Waste Pattern Cutting - Fiona Mills

Today we had quite an interesting lecture about sustainable fashion. Basically the concept of zero waste fashion is to use the full yield of the fabric provided and to not let anything hit the cutting room floor.

There is at least 15-20% fabric waste within fashion construction, this wasted fabric goes into landfills, does not breakdown and therefore becomes toxic to the environment. I did not know this and it came as quite a shock. The yield of a fabric in a lay plan is obviously very important to companies in the lower market, who want to get more garments made from their fabric as possible. Fiona showed us many different researchers who had looked into zero waste fashion in a lot of depth.

Most of the designers that Fiona showed to us today were mainly researchers and did not actually sell any of their designs. Some of their designs I would personally not buy, however I love the concept and think it is extremely interesting. These designers entered a competition called YIELD. A particular design which I loved was by Timo Rissanen, who produced a jacket which just seems genius.

Nikos Gyftakis

Another artist which I found myself on Pinterest is Nikos Gyftakis. He has created a number of self portraits using a fluid-like technique. It looks to me that he has used oil pastels to create these using a large scale of colour.

His portraits are so life like and fluid. I am going to try and re-create this type of drawing myself to see what outcome I can get, although these will not be self portraits, they will be portraits of other people, and I think that I will try and incorporate some of my textiles style into it by using couching to create the fluid lines that Nikos has used. I will use different threads and thickness' of stitches to create this. I believe that this could look quite interesting as a lot of the work that I have been looking at this past week have been more embroidery based.

Ernesto Artillo

One of the girls in the group posted an image from an artist she had found and I thought it was extremely inspirational. So I looked a bit further into the artist and found a few images that I thought related well to our project and could help us develop our concept further.I find these collages really interesting as they are very abstract, this is something I would like to look into myself.