Month: March 2017

Fashion Designer or Textile Artist

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The more precise Artistic Impression is, the more real it seems and freer it feels.  

– Lee Ufan – The Art of Encounter.

 

I’m supposed to know what I am, but how can I when my eye is so acutely drawn to the exquisite couture lace and ruffles of the new McQueen collection, I see in words and speak in pictures and I like to knit and to darn.

jamieson & smith and lurex lace

I’ve knitted so long now that I see in stitches and patterns and blended colours drawn from the places that I have been deeply drawn to or a moment when someone looks up without speaking and the air is full of words or I remember something someone once said, like, ‘never sell these, Tracey, I had them during my grandiose period’ and ‘I read widely, if somewhat cursorily’.  I went home and looked up the word cursorily. 

These moments inform my creative practice – not a fashion design.

I am supposed to choose  –  just choose what I am, but it isn’t like that.  I can be a knitter, a dressmaker, a traveller or a writer because I have no real home. I am rootless and cannot imagine now, putting roots in one place or one creative discipline. Solitude is a place where pictures and words develop, like an old polaroid that is a little out of date but still quite visible.  These pictures and words are also my input into my designs – whether it is a vest or a dress or a curtain.

 

At Uni, I am involved in so many artistic disciplines that they merge into one big, cultivated concept picking up skills and dropping ideas along the way. Artistic expression leads to reflection.  But, this can be fashion.  And, it can be textile art.

 

The lace vests I am making in Nottingham, are a story born out of a dark, grey, solidly wet rainy day in Lerwick.

The dull yellow, hand knitted, utility vest that caught my eye, was hanging in a charity shop in a row of three – all with slight variations. It looked simple, boring, basic but if you listened to its story, it had a marvellous tale, being knitted in one piece, without seams, with care, in the round, with grafted shoulders. DSCN3138

There are no errors, it is a utility item, made for a purpose that no one will ever wear – perfect – it’s mine.  The vest became my integrity-anchor – a basic item of clothing that now grows a new life-form in lace patterns. The vest was added to my memories of seeing fine lace in museum cabinets, drawers in photographs and in the history and tradition of the islands North of Scotland, South of Iceland and next to Norway.

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My attempted samples of CAD lace knit struggled to deliver perfection and threw out random sections with holes. Beautiful imperfect.  So, I darned the holes. Why waste a beautiful sample, why not keep it alive, why not see the colours of the place in the weave and give it another chance?   Is the darning aesthetic or sustainable or for reasons of austerity? 

 

Now,  I have to choose, is the vest fashion or is it textile art?  What am I A Fashion Designer or a Textile Artist?

 

 

And, then there is the lace curtain…

Comeliness – the workmanship of risk

jamieson & smith and lurex lace

‘Comeliness’ – the workmanship of risk….

… ‘If I must ascribe a meaning to the word Craftsmanship, I shall say as a first approximation that it simply means workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus in which the quality of the result is not predetermined but depends on the judgement, dexterity of care which the maker exercises as he works.  The essential idea is that the quality of the result is continually at risk during the process of making, so I shall call this kind of workmanship ‘The workmanship of Risk’

With the workmanship of Risk, we may contrast the’ Workmanship of Certainty’, always to be found in quantity production and found in its pure state in full automation.

‘The Nature of Art and Workmanship’ – David Pye

 

In short, when I was five, David Pye was writing the text above about workmanship and it still stands true nearly 50 years later. Reading his words in relation to ‘craft’ gives me a deeper understanding of what I am doing with a needle and thread, an eye for detail, a mind to experiment and a power knit machine that, although can turn out ‘workmanship of certainty’, the route to that can be long and more fulfilling with its errors, mistakes and risks.  Every turn I take with the lace knitting is ‘workmanship of risk’ – craft  – though the journey starts with a thought and a hope, travels through time in design and out at the other end from a power Knit machine. Every step is gradual, considered and handled carefully even through the power process, it is considered.

 

For some time, my knit has drawn upon my love of Shetland, the islands, its landscape and language. My knit is not just stitches and a pattern and here lies the art / craft.  Or, as David Pye later writes, ‘Comeliness’ which implies the ability to give an aesthetic expression, or to add to it.

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I’m knitting vests, or so I am led to believe. But I keep straying. Comeliness is not a word linked to vests but is a word associated with women. The life of these vests stem from Shetland to Nottingham through conversations that opened up discussions of it being ‘visually polite’ on to questioning mending the errors thrown out by the power machine which found my patterns too difficult to master due to conditions.

The vests are comeliness – not in shape but in aesthetic.  Within them is a life and a story. Each one will be ‘crafted’  Each one will have a name.

 

I am learning technical conditions and terminology and can do nothing but learn to speak in ‘take down’, ‘tension’, ‘ transfer’ ‘technical file’ and ‘half-gauge’. Coming from a long life of drawing with a line of yarn in hand-knitting, initially, I was out of my depth with Power Knit machines and Computer Aided Design (CAD) – splashing around in an unknown sea of errors.  Now, I tread water like when I thought I could swim as a child but could not.  I tread water alongside the technician at Uni who is aware of my errors, guides my ways, shows me steps at such great speed that I am left back at the shore only to tentatively swim out again and have a go.  Repetition is the key.

 

The start is pleasing. Each time I look back at my previous work – even if only a month ago, it looks naïve.  

 

If, as David Pye suggests,  workmanship is judged by a criteria of ‘Soundness’ and ‘Comeliness’ –

Soundness being – the ability to transmit and resist forces as the designer intended, there must be no hidden flaws or weakness. 

And Comeliness being the ability to give that aesthetic expression which the designer intended, or add to it

 – then I’ll embrace Comeliness every time.

 

Thanks to Jamieson & Smith for sponsoring me with the Shetland Supreme lace weight – the darned knit in image one.

http://www.shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk/Shetland-Supreme-Lace-Weight