who is yanii?

Our first module in Textiles is all about Identity, defining yourself through your work and making your personality shine through your work. It's a great concept for promoting originality in our work but I've never had to define my identity through my drawings, and the drawing exercises weren't your generic pencil, paint detailed drawings. Our tutors wanted us to use three words we use to describe yourselves and draw in the style of the words. The three words I chose were timid, busy and colourful. Here are a few snapshots of my week of drawing.

Day 1:- Signatures

On Monday were were using our signature to generate patterns, by writing
our name repeatedly and overlapping it each time. I actually really enjoyed this
but when we started to use this technique to generate drawings it was a bit hard to find

a comfort zone. But I managed to grasp the concept when I started to layer my signature

on my drawings using different media. The most successful drawing was the parrot, layering with

paint and my signature.

Day 2:- Making textures

Making different textures was something I really enjoyed and I think shows my identity more than the drawings with my signatures. We were given blank pieces of paper and were free to make different textures on the surface of the paper using any media of our choice. For me this was like printmaking so ideas flowed smoothly, especially when I found one technique that I could develop in many ways. I mostly worked with inks, a craft knife and paints. The textured papers also worked well when I started to cut shapes into it. For some reason I wanted to cut them into circles and layer them.

So this is what I've been working on during my first week of university.

Inspiring Sandra Buckland

I'm still being inspired by knitwear and constantly researching knitwear designers. The most engaging designer I've found so far is quite new Sandra Buckland. Her designs have fantasy, sculptural elements.
Buckland's designs are inspiring to me because this is the level I aspire to be at with my work.
Also after seeing the Atsuko Tanaka exhibition at the Ikon last month I've been interested in knitwear, especially knitwear with sculptural elements. I've been working on some illustrations
to try and illustrate my ideas but I'm not completely happy with the shapes.

Here is the link to her website.
http://www.sandrabacklund.com/

CRAIG FELLOWS Rantings and what-nots...: Inspired: Maurizio Bongiovanni

Discovered a textile designer while hunting for some fresh ideas for my degree. Craig Fellows was a beacon of light in my uninspired mind.
In this post he talks about an artist Maurizo Bongiovanni that has inspired him.
Click the link below for the blog post on Craig Fellow's blog and have a look at his collections. He is so talented!

[CRAIG FELLOWS] Rantings and what-nots...: Inspired: Maurizio Bongiovanni: Maurizio Bongiovanni- Painter

Atsuko Tanaka: The Art of Connecting 13.08.11

Art- the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty

Connecting- join or fasten

I've chosen these two definitions to help myself clarify the whole idea of this exhibition. Atsuko Tanaka is a Japanese avant-garde artist, in my opinion Tanaka's work fits the definition of avant-garde art. Her work is extremely experimental as she uses a wide variety of materials to create work that blurs the lines between painting, sculpture and performance art.

Walking into the exhibition the smell of freshly painted walls fills the room while Tanaka's work awaits. Her body of work varied from minimal large rectangles of dyed cotton cloth to complex in composition large paintings. For me it was her large colourful and complex paintings that were most engaging and inspiring along with the Electric Dress (1956).

Both the Electric Dress and paintings of vivid lines and circles works well in the exhibition space. I like that the Electric Dress was placed in the centre of the room surrounded by the large paintings as they were analogous in function.

When the dress lit up I immediately thought of modern day Japan, Tokyo a busy city with blazing neon signs all connected by neatly hidden electric wires. The fact that the wires on the Electric Dress aren't hidden echos the title of the exhibition 'The Art of Connecting' which is also apparent in her large vivid paintings which shows the complex connection of circles and lines veering in different directions but always connecting. This also allows you to open your mind and absorb all the colours in the paintings.

-Looking at the Electric Dress lit up my mind also drifts off to a period of Pop Art.

Although Tanaka's work was a few years before the Pop Art movement but I can see
the Electric Dress being displayed in Pop Art exhibition along with works from Roy Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.
Speaking to the invigilator of the exhibition about this he, also echoed my thoughts by saying Japan was also involved in the second World War.

This immediately made another link with Tanaka's work to the Pop Art culture, Bell is a sound installation consisting of 20 electric bells wired together at two-metre intervals.
This sound installation if exhibited during the Pop Art movement could ranslate into the sound of terror, the sound of bomb warning sirens going off to warn people of attack.

This was when real inspiration hit me. The circles in Tanaka's paintings were all different sizes and colours. The lines act as support that connects them. So I thought I could use these paintings and translate them in my own work by using different textures and colours of wool. I thought of wool because you can get a variety to work with which should create interesting lines like in the paintings. For the circles I though those could be represented by various sized pompom wool balls.

Atsuko Tanaka
The Art of Connecting

Ikon July- September 2011

Free Entry

fleur morte

Recently I was sitting in my garden and the dying flowers seemed really appealing to me, something about the way the petals hung lifeless and the rotting holes in the leaves sprung ideas of prints in head. They made me think of a feature I saw in Vogue's April 2011 issue. L'AIR DUTEMPS, the spread showcases dusky florals and delicate chiffons. Looking at the spead in Vogue was reminiscent of my Final Project at Bournville, I worked with hand dyed chiffon and heat transfer Jamaican fruits. Since then I've wanted to do more prints on chiffon, so seeing this feature and being inspired by the dead flowers in my garden they made me so excited about my upcoming Textiles Design degree.

Photos from garden:

Photos from Vogue April 2011 issue:

There's something about Mary...Katranzou