Felting and Fiber Studio

I have recently been to see the exhibition ‘Unravel. The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art’ at the Barbican Centre in London, UK. Here is the link to the relevant page of the Barbican website.

It runs until the 26th May 2024, so people living close can still catch it if they like. The theme is clearly about political art, or art that tackles difficult themes.

I have to say that it got mixed feelings from me, I liked some of the pieces and some not as much, but anyway I feel that it is good to see textiles under the spotlight again, and hopefully this will help with recognition of textile artists everywhere. It was crowded, so there seems to be a lot of interest from the art cliques.

The exhibition was boasting pieces from 50 different international artists, the great majority of them well established and renowned, some of them already passed away. I actually went to the exhibition hoping to see mainly contemporary scene artists, and I understood later that I had seen pieces from some of the people who brought textiles into the Fine Arts spectrum in the Fifties and Sixties!

Most of the artists were also eclectic artist that had started as, variously, traditional painters or ceramists or sculptors.

Some of the pieces were a bit more conceptual than I would have liked, resulting in not particularly interesting techniques but a lot of effort in reading the accompanying texts, and it got a bit too much by the end of the afternoon.

An example of big names’ artworks were Leonore Tawney’s hanging woven sculptures, that broke with the idea of tapestries as the only possible woven outcome: she was a pioneer of the fibre art movement in the United States in the Fifties. Her long life (she lived to 100!) was dedicated to art and her parabola followed somewhat that of the fibre art movement , with a period of recognition in the Fifties followed by fewer exhibitions and recognition after the Seventies. After her earlier experiments with the loom in the Fifites, she gradually abandoned the loom for freer hanging shapes, and finally a nascent type of installation art, driven by a sense of spirituality that was in her 1950s works as well.

Another renowned American fibre artist whose piece I saw at the exhibition is Sheila Hicks, who was present with one of her installations of her ‘bundles’: groups of objects made of colourful yarn and fibres tightly wrapped to resemble sticks and pebbles. She is one of the innovators of the Sixties and Seventies fibre movement, and went on creating different installation art and sculpture pieces. The idea of traditional practices and indigenous rituals plays a part in her installations.

I felt that the representation of artists was a bit scarce on the European and Australian side, whereas the other continents seemed well represented.

There was a British contribution with a quilt piece by Tracey Emin, completely leaning towards the spoken word. It got a lot of interest from the artsy crowd. She upcycled different fabrics to create it, among those a Union Jack and felt scraps from old blankets, and hand appliqued and hand stitched them to shape provocative sentences.

A contribution from Poland was a beautiful quilt by Malgorzata Mirga-Tas depicting life as a Roma, and made by repurposing everyday fabrics. The scene of life in a Roma settlement is very lively and immediately relatable.

I was particularly pleased to see some relatively new face from Africa, such as Billie Zangewa from Malawi and later South Africa, that I did not know and now I looked up on internet and in my reference book on textile artists.

She calls her pieces ‘hand-embroidered silk collage’ and I would say that that name suits them best than the name that I have seen given them, ‘silk tapestries’ . She uses scraps of silk fabrics with strong visual impact.

There was a room all about artworks by South African Igshaan Adams: some works hanging in the middle of the room, almost inviting the viewer to go into their clouds (totally forbidden! all the toddlers were tempted, but the museum attendants were very strict), some from the walls, and a big painting-like piece occupying the whole of one wall by itself. All encrusted with beads and shells and small semi-precious stones, with twisted fabric scraps.

Instead, Tau Lewis is a Canadian artist who talks about her roots as descendant of the African diaspora: she often represents lost Middle Passage victims as fantastical sea creatures in her huge wall hangings.

There was a good representation of Asian artists, such as Cian Dayrit from Philippines with two big embroidered maps in the section about Borderlands, showing places where colonialism is still a very current issue.

Zamthingla Ruivah’s woven piece is actually not one to be shown in a museum as wall hanging but a piece that is meant to be worn everyday as a symbol of protest for the injustice and violence suffered by a young girl in India: thousands of people in the young girl’s local area now weave and wear cloth in that pattern that has become a silent rallying cry for justice. A kind of everyday power of art when it comes in contact with textiles.

Another big name of the fibre art scene was Indian artist Mrinalini Mukherjee, who was present with three pieces of her knotted sculptures resembling human figures. I quite liked her pieces, as I am quite fond of macrame artists, and her pieces seemed to me viscerally meaningful, like ancient goddess’ statues talking to me from the past.

There were no felt pieces at all, a bit disappointing that, as I know quite a few felters that could have been spot on for the theme.

There was a big installation piece that was made with unspoon wool, described in the exhibition leaflet as ‘the product of making yarn but stopping after the carding process.’ It seemed like barely prefelted wool to me, but a bit more consistent than carded wool. There was sound as well, but it was hard to appreciate it in the crowded room where also one other installation piece with sound had the same issue. The artist, South American Cecilia Vicuna, makes pieces that are grounded in Chilean traditions.

At the end of the exhibition there were some scraps of things that were made using materials and techniques seen in the art pieces, so we could touch and feel the materials: it was a very nice, family friendly touch (pun intended).

I hope to have given you a taste of what was on show.

After the exhibition, I also got a book on textile artists and politics, although not the exhibition book: ‘Women’s Work. From feminine arts to feminist art.’ by Ferren Gipson. It’s a collection of biographies of a couple of pages each, with some photos of artworks for each artist: I think that it can be a good reference book to know who is who in the old guard of textile art, though there are some more contemporary faces. It’s a bit scarce on the techniques side, but anyway pretty interesting from a historical point of view.

 

I spin almost every day.  Partly because I love to spin.  And partly because I can easily combine spinning with TV watching time with my husband.  This results in piles of spun yarn that needs to be washed and set.  When you spin yarn, there is often excess twist in the yarn.  Washing helps that twist settle out.  Washing also helps remove any excess dye present in the fibre.  For some fibers, when you wash them they bloom quite a bit and the final yarn can be shorter and plumper than it was before washing.  The following photos show the same yarn I before and after washing.  These yarns are from my previous batch of spinning/washing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had been about 3 weeks since I last washed any yarn and my bag of unwashed skeins was getting full.  I took them upstairs to our spare bathroom for washing.  This bathroom has 2 sinks which makes washing skeins faster.

I dug out my equipment.   Some leave in wool wash.  And my counter top spin dryer.  I bought this spin dryer in 2013 from The Laundry Alternative and it is one of my favourite tools.  I am going to be very sad when the motor dies and it bites the dust.  But so far it is still working fine.  The wool wash is from a local company and it is a great product.  Gentle on the wool and it has a light scent that is appealing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After getting setup I started washing skeins.  I fill the sink with slightly warm water and add a glug of the wool wash.  Then I push the yarn into the water to ensure it gets fully wet.  I leave it to soak for 15-20 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After washing I drain out the water and put the skeins in the spin dryer.  I have a video from a few years ago showing the spin dryer in action.

 

Sometimes when I wash skeins you can see the dye coming off the yarn.  If the water is really stained with dye I will sometimes do another rinse.  It is best to remove any excess dye before putting the yarn into a project.  This avoids unpleasant surprises later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After spinning out the water, I take each skein out of the spin  dryer and snap them a few times.  This involves opening up the skein and putting my wrists inside the loop.  Next I quickly move my hands outward to snap the yarn tightly.  I will then rotate the skein and repeat this a few times.  Finally I take the skein and drape it over the neck of a hanger to dry.  After a day or two I come back and rotate the skein on the hanger so that a dry area is against the neck of the hanger.  This helps the other area (previously on the neck of the hanger) to get more airflow and dry thoroughly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are my 8 skeins of yarn washed and drying.  All these skeins were wound on the same skein winder.  The variation in length shows how some yarns shrink/bloom when washed.  The two shortest skeins are also the bulkiest yarns, spun as coreless corespun and then plied with thread.  Both of these bulky yarns were spun from Mystery Batts I received in my World of Wool Botany Lap Waste bag.  The coloured skeins are all Superwash Merino.  And the one cream skein is a Mohair (70%)/ Wool (20%) / Silk (10%) blend.