Sunday 5 June 2011

Webs of Lace

I've been very good today and have immersed myself into my next degree module which is a personal specialism about making site specific work. My interest still lies in all things to do with lace and in particular the way it can reveal and conceal and so I have been researching artists who use lace type structures in site specific work.


Aunty Peggy has Departed, 2003

I have been fascinated by the work of Shane Waltener whose fabulous doilies range from those on a small scale such as this installation in a 1940's phone booth in the disused Aldwych tube station to the enormous web that surrounded the Chihuly chandelier in the V & A foyer...
Chilhuly Doily, 2004

and his piece World Wide Web which was a 25 square metre knitted cobweb of shirring elastic installed in the Museum of Art and Design in New York, designed to disrupt the gallery space.

World Wide Web, 2007


And as often happens I got disrtracted along the way and discovered the work of Susie Cowie who also does some amazingly beautiful things with lace but on a much smaller scale.

For me this is the most exciting part of taking a degree - the discovery of new and different artists. I love the research almost as much as the making!

13 comments:

  1. Just a thimbleful...

    Wow, Gina - how exciting!! I love doing free crochet work but that is something else. What a voyage of discovery.

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  2. Those are amazing pieces of work. Shirring elastic - I ask you, who would have thought of that?

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  3. ooh Gina - some very interesting food for creative thought there. thanks for the links.

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  4. Brilliant! Thank you for the links to these wonderful artists - the spiderweb one in the phone booth is beautiful.

    x

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  5. Thanks for the new discoveries! I saw Naseem Darbey's "Between the Lines" installation the other week, that's lace/site-specific too, see her website and recent Embroidery mag.

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  6. Thankyou for sharing your wonderful discoveries with us Gina. Those lace constructions are all amazing and so very different. It sounds as if you are really enjoying this part of your degree course.

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  7. Gina, thank you again for your generosity in sharing with your readers all sorts of introductions to creative folks that we might not have otherwise met.

    I always associate lace with historic times of yore, and also with spiders' webs. And love that contemporary craftsfolks and artists are still drawn to the possibilities of drawing with thread.

    xo

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  8. I am so glad you are doing this degree......... I may not have come across these artists otherwise. Thank you.

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  9. I adore Chihuly and the Chihuly doily is absolutely wonderful. Really looking forward to seeing what you come up with for your site-specific work.

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  10. Those examples look lovely and it's easy to see why you have chosen to make it your specialism.

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  11. The Shane Waltener works are just fascinating. I'd never thought of lace on that scale before. K x

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  12. wow - what amazing inspiration, I've never seen Shane Waltener's work before - quite awesome! Sounds like you're enjoying getting started on a new module and with inspiration like this I know you'll come up with something wonderful!

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