The Textile Artist: Sculptural Textile Art: A practical guide to mixed media wire sculpture

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Albers considered texture to be particularly important in her artworks, noting that "Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art." To achieve texture, she often combined materials, here utilizing three textiles with different properties, but in other works she incorporated more unusual elements such as horsehair, paper, and cellophane. As Brenda Danilowitz, chief curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, states: "For Albers, weaving combined art, architecture, and engineering. Her quest was to devise ways for her materials - the threads themselves - to create the visual and textural action in her work." This work represents an imagined blue world where the sky touches the earth at the horizon line. It was inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s book A Field Guide to Getting Lost in which the author describes ‘the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky’. To attach the cord to the trowel, I need an anchor point. I use a pillar drill to make a row of holes around the edge of the metal trowel. This gives me the starting point for attaching the cordage to the object.

Search Press supports the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada (DAAC), and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA). Soft Sculpture is an experimental series challenging the traditional image of textile form. By blending knitting craft with experimental material, this series showcases a refined relationship between materials, form and texture. The pieces are knitted by inlay techniques combining up-cycle d bubble wrap during the knitting process. The uniquely chosen material characterised by its light weight and flexibility, creates sculptural and weightless pieces conceiving a new possibility of textile form.” Photographer: Yu-Mei Huang Photographer: Yu-Mei Huang Albers’ artistic vocabulary was influenced by places around the world where she studied. She was particularly took inspiration from Latin American countries and their traditions of weaving. Her works, which she called “ pictorial weaving,” largely centre around pattern, texture, and line work. Albers’ works belong to some of the most prestigious collections in the world and continue to star in exhibitions today. Albers was pivotal in developing weaving as a discipline and in 1949, a solo show of her works at New York’s Museum of Modern Art was the first such exhibition at the museum to solely focus on textiles. Weaving by Anni Albers. Image courtesy of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London With this realisation reached, Yu-Mei began to “examine the boundaries in different disciplines” which allowed her to work in “an interdisciplinary movement from fibre art to Installation”. Taking on a variety of commissions and consultancy roles simultaneously allowed her to trial new approaches for her refined knitting methods. The same structures and knit knowledge that she honed during her MA were now being applied to different knitted design briefs. Photographer: AUR

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I especially love sea creatures, they are artwork by themselves, and I’m always blown away by their beauty. Whenever I have the opportunity, I enjoy watching documentary films about the deep ocean. I'm constantly amazed by creatures that I’ve never seen before. There are so many creatures that we haven’t discovered yet. The ocean is full of mysteries. Yet, along with all the positives, there’s a real challenge textile sculptors face: figuring out how to help fabrics maintain intricate shapes and forms. But that’s where 3D textile art gets even more exciting, as sculptors brainstorm ingenious ways to help fabrics hold themselves upright in their manipulated splendour. When I was in junior high school I decided to become an artist, so I went to a high school which offered a fine art major. There I learned about art in general, such as painting, sculpture, design, and art history. I really had a great time, and then I went to an art college after that. So, I was determined to become an artist at an early age. Fabric is one of the most familiar of everyday materials. Even though the word “fabric” sounds straightforward enough, the range of different fabrics is broad, with unique characteristics that can draw out a variety of sensations or emotions. Some fabrics imply the cool feeling of moisture, others have a fluffiness that is comforting; there are fabrics that invoke the mysterious or the ethereal; there are fabrics that inspire tranquility; and some fabrics suggest fragility, subtlety, etc.

Although their work has been associated with land and environmental art, their wrapped pieces play a significant role in the history of textiles. Textiles have the reputation of being small-scale and fragile and the wrapped works challenged these misconceptions about the power and presence of textile art. By enveloping buildings in fabric, their artworks blurred the lines between architecture and fine arts and this statement was enhanced through the use of an iridescent, silvery-blue fabric. The reflective qualities of the fabric changed during exposure to sunshine and wind and through specifically structured pleats in the wrap, enhancing the overall sculptural appearance of the completed work. Since 2019 Yu-Mei has worked on numerous cross-disciplinary commissions and collaborations, with her work showcased at London Craft Week and international exhibitions. Nearly 4 years (and a global pandemic) later, we’ve caught up with Yu-Mei to hear about her transition from knitting garments into creating knitted textiles for gallery contexts, as she prepares to collaborate with TextielMuseum in the Netherlands. Kanat is deeply connected to her art, and it is reflected in her textiles. “For me, weaving projects a mood,” she explains. “I follow my instinct to create designs that feel balanced. I am very visual, always taking note of my surroundings and believe this is reflected in my work.” It was later in 2022 that Yu-Mei submitted a project proposal to the TextieilMuseum’s Textile Lab in the hopes of earning the opportunity to collaborate for her project ‘Soft Sculpture’.Found items form a tangible link to the place that they came from. By working with found objects and gathered materials, I’m able to create something that forms a personal record of the place these items are connected to. Experimentation and innovation with knitted forms are central to Yu-Mei’s artist identity, whether applying these skills to applications on the human form or making objects through structural explorations. Alice Fox: Found objects often form a starting point for my work. These might be gathered on walks in my local area or further afield. Her material pallet remained similar to that of her MA collections, combining polyester and elastic yarns to accommodate colour play with the heat press (synthetic fibres are required for colour adhesion when using a heat press for sublimation printing). The elastic facilitates stretch and recovery in her fabrics. Within her more recent work Yu-Mei has also introduced monofilament to explore transparency and illusion within her knitted structures. For many centuries, art meant the mastery over a particular, skill, style, or discipline but this changed in the 19 th century when the term began to be associated with something that was intended for display but did not necessarily have a practical use. Consequently, the definition of textile art is also fluid - initially inseparable from the practical uses of textiles in dress and home comfort - more recent examples of textile art do not always have a direct function. In a historical context, it is also difficult to separate the learned craft and skills associated with the manufacture of textile art from the art of its design and execution, particularly given that the people, usually women, associated with making and designing historic, domestic textile art are rarely recorded.