Textile Society of America
Date of this Version
2006
Document Type
Article
Citation
Textile Narratives & Conversions: Proceedings of the 10th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, October 11–14, Toronto, Ontario
Abstract
Textiles have an intimate relationship in everyone’s life - whether one is aware of it or not. Textiles reveal so many stories and memories from every culture and society. My mother was an educator in a home economic school and I was trained by her hands; I was constantly busy helping her with quilting, embroidering, stitching, and making clothing. I grew up appreciating the dedication and skill in textile works. But it is the passion for story telling and the conceptual part of textile more than the desire to creating beautiful textile alone drove me toward the path of textile art. I simply use fiber media and textile techniques to express my feeling through my works.
In this panel, I will address my way of working with my own art first and how everyday life, my upbringing, and my experience with different cultures, have inspired my works. Second, I will address how I approach my teaching in textile and offer some examples of assignments in my classroom.
My textile art is the result of a labor of love, involving the meditative processes of weaving, stitching and printing, incorporating different techniques and unusual materials and evoking deep emotional responses. Scale, repetitive details and transformed materials are a key aspect of my works. From constructing garment forms to creating body sculptures, and then creating the installation work embracing the body, I have always dealt with the human body and its perceptions in my work. Working on a large scale and suspending work from the ceiling allows me to create a dynamic setting that combines the beautiful and uncontainable. It helps me to reach the state of the sublime. Such as “we are in the same boat” which is 16 foot long, viewers become part of the work. It looks very still and quiet when you stand far away, but as you walk close to the space, the lightness of the piece will move ever so slightly even by your breathing.
Comments
Copyright 2006 by the author.