American artist Sanford Biggers has an incredibly diverse and eclectic practice encompassing a vast range of media, including film/video, sculpture, installation, music and performance. But his eclectic textile art is one of the most celebrated aspects of his oeuvre, in which he stitches together a vast array of fabric swatches into brilliantly bright, daringly experimental…
Category Archives: TEXTILES
After living in the Southern part of the United States for the last six years, my husband and I packed up all of our belongings and drove over two-thousand miles across country to Portland, Oregon. To say this move was a long time coming is a bit of an understatement; we’d been looking for a…
In Vincent van Gogh’s late paintings, pale blues like Sky became a primary feature, documenting his own intimate, expressive response to the landscapes of Saint-Remy and Auvers. His landscapes convey the wonder he felt at the swirling, iridescent blue light opening out above and all around him, which he painted in sparkling, luminescent shades of…
Worldwide, short product lifecycles, including cheaply made garments produced at high volumes, textile waste, and production waste byproducts occurring down the supply chain have resulted in 92 million tons of annual landfill and incinerated pollution. Beyond the physical waste produced, the exploitive working conditions in clothing manufacturing have broad social ramifications on human health and…
One of India’s most gifted artists, Mrinalini Mukherjee tracked new and unchartered territory with her painstakingly intricate and monumentally scaled woven sculptures, that could each take her up to a year to complete. Working with dyed natural fibres including jute and rope, she created anthropomorphic structures resembling biomorphic forms, each one invested with its own…
American fibre artist Lenore Tawney is world renowned for her ghostly, ephemeral weavings and tapestries, which emulated the ethereal forces of nature, such as water, translucency and light. From the 1960s onwards she was one of a generation of textile artists including Anni Albers and Sheila Hicks who dissolved the boundaries between textile design and…
Tea towels are the small but mighty companions that so many of us take for granted, playing a role that is practical, utilitarian and aesthetic. For centuries these seemingly humble pieces of fabric have existed in our private day to day lives, evolving and adapting through the ages to suit our wants and needs. Their…
MEDITERRANEAN BLUE is a dazzling, electrifyingly bright colour that conveys the soaring brilliance of summer. Artists through the generations have explored how this entrancing shade of turquoise blue can capture the light of the European coastline, encapsulating the azure blue of the ocean and the wide-open, cloudless skies overhead. We look at three pioneering French…
A master weaver of the 1950s to the early aughts, British textile designer and artist Peter Collingwood made highly skilled rugs, split-ply baskets, wall-hangings and installations with intricate and fascinatingly complex designs. With a muted, pared back colour scheme, he focussed his energy on producing exquisite geometric patterns resembling Celtic knots or Afghan rug patterns….
Contemporary American artist Diedrick Brackens has a knack for telling stories old and new, weaving them deftly into his intricate, hand-crafted textiles. Based in Los Angeles, Brackens draws on the traditions of textiles as a powerful and direct means of communication, using them to reflect on themes surrounding identity, race and sexuality that impact his…
Pop artist Andy Warhol had an inimitable knack for capturing the essence of an object, animal or person, ramping up its impact with daring, electrifyingly bright shades of colour like RASPBERRY’s searing hot pink. His screen prints are arguably the most enduring aspect of his legacy, giving him room to experiment wildly with the same…
In a world fit to burst with excess, contemporary Greek-born, London-based textile designer Maria Sigma still believes fabrics should play a significant role in our daily lives. She produces what she calls “zero waste woven textiles” from naturally derived, recycled, or upcycled yarns, which are designed to bring depth and warmth to interior spaces. These…
The pioneering Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi painted a world of rich, decadent and warm tones like MARSALA, which she coupled with dramatic, heightened chiaroscuro. Her paintings draw us into private worlds where theatrical, sometimes terrifying stories play out, or melancholic heroines are overcome with strong emotion. As the most successful female painter of her day,…
From canopies made of recycled t-shirts and architectural wall-hangings to vast garments made for multiple wearers, Mexican artist Pia Camil is constantly experimenting with the boundaries of textile art, pushing it in a series of exciting and unexpected directions. She is particularly interested in breaking down the pretensions of the art world, namely the utopian…
British 19th century painter John Constable painted the British landscape as a place of wild and unspoilt wonder, revelling in its curling old trees, mud-soaked ground and billowing, cloud-filled skies. He was fascinated by nature in all its grubby, dirty reality and often honed in on details other might choose to ignore or omit, like…
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