Weaving &
other textile experiments
My love and interest in the language of weaving became more vital after participating in a Surface and Structure course as offered by Naoko Furue.
This was followed through with a graduate research project with the guidance and faculty support of Wendy Landry. Initially I experimented with four-harness weave structures, messing around with the set and the materials in order to animate and push the textile further.
“Making” for me is a cognitive process which, when “making” is “working”, enables conceptual departures.
My ongoing long-term research, love, and physial exploration into traditional Quebec weaving, as inspired by Oscar Beriaus’ book, Tissage Domestique (1938, Ministry of Agriculture of Quebec), led me to hundreds of hours of physical experimentation and sample making. I modified the structure of the woven cloth, switched up the materials, and integrated them with felting or a felt resist print technique. This cloth in turn created forms for the body, namely hats and mitt forms.
All of my weaving for the body is created out of customized woven/printed/felted cloth, which was neither cut nor held together artificially. Some of these forms were derived from a tubular woven structure.
This work was sold in the prestigious Holt Renfrew World Fashion Lab in Toronto, and at ICCI an avante-guarde clothing boutique in Toronto that featured fashion designers such as Rei Kawakuba, and Martin Margeilla and Anne Deulmemeister.
I am not a production weaver and never make the same thing twice. I like the idea of the state of “becoming” and view my works as compositions or prototypes.
