Jeanette
Appleton - September
On my return from teaching in America
I have concentrated on the installation of a continual line
of cloth. I would like to create qualities of a journey, the
rhythm and mobility of arriving, gazing and moving on. The
nomadic state of being fixed in the position of in between
spaces and capturing the fleeting fragments of a view.
Suspending the cloth with in a space
would loose the identity of what is the front or back. Enabling
the audience to keep their viewing options open to define
a space of attraction. This was also considered in my decision
to have the cloth edge connected at points on sliding fixtures,
to reveal and conceal the images within the folds. The length
and shape could change depending on the size of the exhibition
space. Exposing open spaces of colour and marks compared with
the folded blocks of cloth.
The beauty of needle felt is its ability
to appear both solid or transparent. Lighting is important
to illuminate this and the embedded marks and colours within
the surface. A slowly moving light, scanning back and forth
along the length would evoke the changes on a journey. Positioning
of the lights would depend on how the shadows fall off the
cloth, creating at present, unknown shapes.
Evaluating the past three months experience
by using the projects ‘questions for discussion’
list has been very helpful. Like the initial guide lines,
it gave me an over view to consider the ‘what if’
and ‘where as’ of specific points. Reflection
is an important part of the creative process to extend the
possibilities not realised at the time. It has informed the
presentation of my work and the essay for the catalogue.
A discussion regarding the preparation/research
before your partner arrived, led me to consider the balance
of initial information. How it affects responses and expectations,
as creating pre-conceived ideas often cause disappointment.
How to schedule time and space to enable surprises and elation
of the unexpected to also happen. Comparing it to the advertising
of a tourist site, where the associations of nostalgia or
escapism are often used to capture our emotional needs. Did
I advertise the working and research sites to Naoko sufficiently?!
Possibly more visual images would have been more appropriate,
because now I realise there can be different understandings
in translation.
How much knowledge is required for the
stranger to feel secure but still have a sense of adventure?
Different forms of mapping are required to enable the individual
to form their own orientation. I feel this has been my role
as a mentor, a site of information which Naoko could refer
to when considering which way to go. It has been a pleasure
and an inspiration to work with such a sensitive and dedicated
artist. I look forward to our continual exchange and friendship.
To be involved in the various aspects
of mentoring, the education programme and new working methods,
has extended my textile practise. I wish to thank Lesley Millar
for her creative perception and energy to enable this special
project to develop.
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Naoko
Yoshimoto - September
Once again I have begun making in my
studio in Japan. At the beginning of
the month I experimented often to try to solve the problems
I had. My concern is how to exhibit the final outcome. I will
make balls of threads out of the garments that I collected.
I want to reconstruct my journey to England by assembling
the pieces of fabric that I acquired along the way.
Jeanette’s metaphor of a journey
as a piece of long fabric inspired me. I represent my journey
as a stream of worn out fabrics and threads. I stitched the
pieces by special threads that dissolve with heat. I liked
the textures of the work; the mixture of the different coloured
threads and the movement that was created by the fragmentation.
However, this way of making weakened the identity of each
piece and also the identities of the original owners of the
garments. Each fragment of the garment or fabric symbolises
the place that I have been and the people that I have met.
They are all precious to me. Ultimately, I want to reconstruct
the memories of my journey without loosing the identity of
each garment. Then I began my search for the best presentation
of the work.
While I was working in England I collected
the fabrics and kept them in plastic packages (similar to
the ones for sandwiches. My next attempt was to combine the
packages in my work. I liked the way the package made each
piece of fabric something rather important. I created a collage
of the plastic packages of the fabrics and the fact that the
packages were transparent enabled me to observe the structure
of the fabric in detail. This solution satisfied me. I added
other pieces to the collection from my own clothes. These
clothes conveyed the time I spent in a place. I printed some
images onto the surface of my clothes.
The collage of the fragment clothes
projected the process of reassembling my memories from the
land. Now I am thinking about making a series for each place
that I went in the past. I will spin the threads which I gather
in the process and eventually make balls of threads. I will
place labels which bear the names of the places from where
the thread belongs.
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