Provoking Encounters: experiments in tactile sculpture for an atelier client.

The inspiration for this project stems from a previous group art residency at the Bowes Museum. The explorations of process investigated in the residency has since been fused with the progression of design goals for a commissioned WEFT ATELIER fine dining ware collection for a private patron of the arts.  

Venturing into sculptural form allows stitch to be translated without reference to fabrics, freeing it from the association with textile and opening up possibilities. 

Repetition provides the integrity which holds the piece together. Each stitch with equal importance, creating strength, taking on architectural form. 

Through the act of holding together we avoid disintegration.  

The casting of this piece captures the delicate communal act of purpose. A fusion of material and metaphysical realms, giving form to the intangible and provoking encounters and their entanglements. Dense and taught in part, expansive and accommodating in others.   

The natural progression to evolve the collection was to move into fine metals to complete the ‘Provoking Encounters’ brief for the collection. Sharing the creative experience with another artist extends the idea further bringing valuable skills and additional inspirations to the process. The collaboration was realised with independent silversmith Patrick Hoye. 

Hoye's special interest in casting and attention to fine detail made his studio the crucial artisan partner across this project. His understanding of the concept and his enthusiasm allowed him the opportunity to break free from standard smithing practice and bring previously untried concepts to create something truly unique.  A determination to find the superlative process for such intricate source material has, through meticulous experimentation and with many pathways, giving further merit to the final craftsman process. 

This allowed the partnership to craft an extensive ensemble of napkin rings and other table ornamentation to complement the elegantly hand-stitched Belgian linen napery to fully realise the brief and beyond, resulting in exquisite and detailed set pieces. Through the rendering of the fine stitch in a perfect yet fascinating tactile simulacrum, WEFT ATELIER created a storied collection the patron can share with their invited dining guests for decades to come.  

Provoking Encounters. Development stages and numerous attempts to realise structure from fragility to create sculptural table pieces in fine metals based on textile art.
#private commission to brief (2023)
rayon thread, casting, solid silver

art partner: Patrick Hoye

August, 2023

Histories outside

A collection of interplays between natural objects and human interventions, the fragile and the permanent, forever transforming it.

Continuing the exploration of unstable boundaries.

This is an ongoing project to bring the outside into the studio and work on substrates that are terrifyingly delicate to learn what can be known.

Invisible stitches circumnavigate the veins within rose petals. Each stitch eroding the overall integrity of the petal itself. As the petal accelerates its decomposition it generates an almost graphic pop art quality and the stitches create an unintentional modernism from the flower.

Modernism has always been here.
#action project (2023)
rose petals, threads, photography & digital corruption

Air rising

Invisible forces and their tensions and intentions.

Their boundaries, unstable.

Individually and collectively, they relay patterns, taking on new qualities.

In this piece we take the sketchbook play of fragile circles and transfer them to hard stone. As part of this transformation the idea of bubbles becomes solid and sculptural. This is very much how we imagine location informing ideas translated by personal perception.

Modernism has always been here.
#action project (2023)
pencil drawing, sand, stone, tide, sound

art assistant: Amelia Rogers

Overlapping thoughts

Repetitive thoughts are encroaching.

Yet using repetition can be meditative.

Nature uses repetition to build. The parts connecting to the sum. A tapestry emerges.

Forests of seaweed becomes ecosystems. Within repetition we thrive.

Meditations in repetition.
#action project (2023)
pencil drawing, sand, animal, tide, sound

art assistant: Amelia Rogers

Lines. Drawn.

Continuing the project of transforming sketchbook play into an action, and vice versa, we explore the tyranny of the line.

From boundaries to rails, routes to directions, the line can come to represent many things. As humans we believe we invented the line as a form of rule.

We are not the only makers

We are not the only rulers..

Lines, drawn.
#action project (2023)
pencil drawing, sand, animal, tide, sound

art assistant: Amelia Rogers

Ever increasing

Bringing to life sketchbook play into the 3D realm can take on many forms.

Here we transcribe rough, impetuous circles, almost idle in their creation, into something more earthbound. Almost ancient.

By pairing the immovable with the untameable, we create tension and drama where, previously, there was none.

Adding the sonic soundscape we create a captivation. And, we create questions.

How will the thought (the idea) survive the element (the increasing tide) ? An element that has no boundaries. When will one (time) overcome the other (space) ?

Here is a short video of that moment of intention and tension.

Fixity
#action project (2023)
pencil drawing, sand, wood, waves, sound

art assistant: Amelia Rogers

Sketchbook play with artist Karen Abend

The global arts community open their sketchbooks

Below are a selection of images taken from the fantastic online Sketchbook Revival workshops the studio took part in with US illustrator, Karen Abend, now based in Italy

‘ The whole process reminded me that all kinds of drawing can contribute.

Drawing with the needle is not my only inspiration.’

From impetuous one-line cat drawings to architectural perspectives and various forms of mark making, this is just a small cross section of the suggested techniques and inspirations to play with.

Potential

Unstable boundaries

Bringing to life an idea from a single scene in nature, using colour and light, and then allowing that idea to move from complexity to fixity through the use of unstable boundaries and hues.

“The stages of design work are never the same. A colour taken from a scene in nature, transforms, breathes, expands, separates, coalesces, returns, finds it shape.” - Lisa Smith, studio founder.