Wilt | Warp 100% fine dark blue schappe silk. The weft varies on design; silk, polyester|mixed, linen, cotton, fancy yarns.
This project was iniated as a live brief aimed at Nuno Corporation and inspired by the documentary ‘Blue Alchemy’.
It was a chance to study what process means to me. Plant growth is something that has always stunned me. Something filled with inigmas; resilient but delicate. I approached the project on what I wanted to learn within a plants growth. Selecting adjectives that helped address the stages I wanted to investigate & portray.
photography belongs to me, unless otherwise credited (shown on moodboards).
embossed drawing development
From the beginning of the project I was struggling to explain what I meant visually and spent a lot of time experimenting to find a process that helped express this. It was a great journey to document the stages I had envisioned in my head, leading me to more resolved woven designs.
I had this visual cue of a plant growing, but the growth a plant undertakes visible on a time-lapse, the movement not visible to the human eye due to the slow nature. A plant, at great speed encapsulating, overlapping, falling, curling, swallowing, drying, drooping, wilting. I was trying to explain a rigid fluidity in all it’s contradictions.
I worked with an all blue colour palette. This was something I was certain of very early. I am very confident in using colour and felt the blue supported my idea of allowng the samples to speak for themselves and not become a distraction. Monochromatism and repetition was how I saw the sample embodying the words I could not find.
The play with shade in a monochramtic palette was in reference to movement. How a plant moves towards light, in some cases completly changing its form and repositioning itself for light. The structure hopefully gives the impression of light running over it. Most of my design work for the project was intentionally assymectric 1) because plants as a whole do not grow symmetric, there may be a leaf or flower that appears so, but a full plant from the beginning to end of its life cycle cannot.