A Dialogue about Social Weaving: The Weaving Kiosk and Weaving Lab

This essay posits that the simple process of bringing two divergent threads together to form cloth is a powerful endeavour. Informed by ancient craft, technique and metaphor the act of weaving remains to this day a powerful tool to express complex ideas and to tangibly illustrate beauty and abstraction. As a weave major, I am interested in exploring the transformative power of weaving in my practice as an emerging designer and also the broader discourse of artisanship and art. This essay investigates the transformative power of weaving through three key themes: i) Time honoured metaphor; ii) Politicising materiality and process through reconceptualising constructions of femininity, non- western cultures and modern art, and iii) Future potential through an exploration of domain shifts. Particular reference is made to the pervasiveness of weaving as a metaphor in ancient and modern vernaculars and how this has traversed time and space to maintain its relevancy today. The complex relationship between women and textiles will briefly be discussed in relation to woman’s traditional role as child-rearer and how this has inextricably linked women with textiles. The political potential of weaving will be explored in the context of the Fiber Arts movement emerging in the 1960s and spearheaded by Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenor Larson. The pioneering work of Lenore Tawney will be discussed in relation to her ‘open warp’ technique, which proved to be controversial for defying categorisation both within the modern art context and also within the weaving fraternity. The work of Anni Albers and Sheila Hicks is then examined within a political framework, which sought to challenge the dominant modern art praxis denying women and non-western people their place as artists within their own right. Working outside this system and co-creating with native weaving practitioners, Albers and Hicks were engaged in a political act. Particular reference is made to Albers’ latter works ‘Monte Alban’ and ‘Ancient Writing’, where her linguistic sensibility was innovatively woven into the pieces. This complex array of meaning and codes became a signature of her work as an artist, weaver and designer. Hicks’ works are further examined in relation to her pioneering spirit living amidst the sexual and cultural revolution of the 1960s. Her extensive travels and observations of different societies and their cultural practices informed her work with an ethnographic quality challenging the status quo. Richard Sennett’s illuminating concept of ‘domain shifts’ is introduced in respect to new artists emerging with a particular weaving focus. While the three profiled artists work with different mediums and from different conceptual frameworks, each artist poignantly reinterprets the weave structure while respecting its historical lineage. I conclude with my own reflections on the transformative power of weaving and what it means to me as a weaver and an emerging designer. I believe in the transformative power of weaving, through co-creation, innovation and an observance of those who have gone before to challenge, subvert and create true works of beauty.

2020

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the potential of knitting and other forms of handicraft as an art-based research method. Many modes of DIY (Do It Yourself) have become increasingly popular in the past ten years, attracting younger generations to rediscover the pleasure of doing something with one’s hands. Knitting and knitting circles are part of this development. We draw on our work on guerrilla knitting as an organizational intervention when organizing an art exhibition in a Finnish museum (Ahmas in Norsunluutornin purkajat. Kollektiivinen asiantuntijuus ja jaettu johtajuus museossa [Dismantling an Ivory Tower: Shared Leadership and Collective Expertise in a Museum]. 2014; Ahmas and Koivunen 2017). The exciting effects of this guerrilla knitting activity encouraged us to explore further the capacity of knitting and other handicraft methods. Guerrilla knitting, yarn bombing, urban knitting or graffiti knitting is a type of street art that employs colourful displays of kni...

Art Education, 2019

Contemporary handwork, including all forms of stitching, provides a reflective outlet and is rich in social, cultural, and political history. The desire to connect to the handmade and the tactile through handwork involves practices that enable us to share our humanity and experiences and offer an alternative to the pressures of contemporary life. Through the act of stitching, one can engage in a practice through the senses, seeking to satisfy a deep longing to make space for beauty and creativity, in much the same way people for millennia have come together to spin, weave and sew (Barber, 1995). Like others before us, we, the authors, pick up needle and thread because it is accessible and easily done; the practice providing creative sustenance and informing our research and teaching through the repetitive nature of the act of stitching. One stitch at a time, the authors weave the story of their lives and the lives of those who may equally find the practices as nourishing as it is socially active and historically relevant. Through the exploration of this topic from several positions, including craft as activism and revolution, stitching as renewal, and remembering artists from the past, the authors’ aim is to inform and illuminate the many ways craft has been a part of our social fabric and how the renewed interest in craft and handwork can shape art education.

This is the introduction for a special issue of Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture on craft, collaboration, and community. Co-edited with Lisa Vinebaum (SAIC).

2012

Knitting is embedded within our culture and navigates between practice, artefact, and narrative, acting as a rich metaphor for social change (Hemmings, 2010). Knitting can transcend traditional boundaries of craft practice and transfer knowledge from one discipline to another. Sennet (2008) refers to this as the domain shift where the principles central to one craft can be transferred to another. A cultural phenomenon, knitting derived from the everyday domestic activity and over history has played an important role within the community, from patriotic knitting to guerrilla knitting, (the term used for creating public art through knitting) and performance. Knitting however has been largely neglected within design and academic research due to its strong association with domestic life. Arguably, it is because knitting is so closely associated with the everyday that it has been overlooked as a craft that can add value to a broader range of design issues. Today, in the face of so much c...

Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 2021

This article discusses how to live with differences while maintaining differences in an international embroidery workshop in Tromsø, Norway. It explores the role of art in enabling interactions between strangers, showing how individuals become part of collectives and facilitate social change. This collaboration between artist and researcher draws on data from arts-based participant observations and qualitative interviews. The analysis shows how embroidery practices, materials, and the expression of the embroideries create a space affording integrative encounters between strangers, easing the interaction which neither presupposes nor asks for similarities, or aims for strong interpersonal relations. We find that difference is the material through which encounters are made. The embroidering and the workshop create a space owned by no one with no majorities or minorities, where all possess differences but do not produce "otherness." Participants remain different, yet connect and transform, while demonstrating the possibilities of impersonal cross-cultural encounters.

Sustainable Textiles: Production, Processing, Manufacturing & Chemistry, 2021

Handloom artistry dates back to the 17 th century in Africa. In Ghana, the handloom is used to produce the traditional Kente textiles, which form part of the country's identity. This research focuses on Bonwire, Ghana a weaving community in the Ashanti region, that is specialised in the weaving of the Kente textile. However, modernisation and globalisation are seemingly threatening this industry, as a new trade law allowed imports of printed Kenteinspired textiles from Europe, America and Asia. This chapter focuses on the artisans involved in the handweaving process of the Ghanaian Kente textiles, by investigating the role of the handloom on the identity of the weavers. Weaving with a handloom has a long-standing tradition in Bonwire, thus, exploring the implications of modernisation and globalization on this traditional trade and subsequently on the identity of the weavers will be explored. This qualitative enquiry draws on 20 semi-structured interviews with artisans involved in the Kente weaving process, to explore the role of the handloom on their identity. Initial findings highlight that the art of using the handloom is infused into the culture of the weavers of Bonwire. The weavers have taken the handloom to represent a part of their identity, in that without the handloom, it will appear as though they have no identity.

This paper reflects on practices of careful unraveling and mending as being intimately constitutive of particular embodied thinking processes. My starting point is an ethnography of the dialogues between calado embroidery and engineering design. Hence, through describing the partial unraveling of fabrics intended to become calado and their subsequent mending through weaving, I question the double agency of these practices: over the ethnography that approaches them, and about the effects of ethnography, affected by calado practices, on engineers’ imaginaries and expectations about design and about the craft’s context. Throughout the paper I emphasize how such processes of unraveling and mending are constituted by care in relation to bodies and materialities. Thus I pay special attention to how these processes intertwine stories about embodied and domestic learning and ambiguous invisibility crosscut by gender in particular ways.

Craft Research, 2015

Craft and the Handmade: Making the intangible visible In November 2014, the Department of Fashion and Textiles at the University of Huddersfield hosted the conference Transition: Rethinking Textiles and Surfaces. 1 The conference sought to scrutinize current and future developments in textile research and its applications within the wider context of the creative industries. With keynote presentations from Professor Becky Earley, Professor Jane Harris, Dr Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu, publisher David Shah and Trend Union forecaster Philip Fimmano, this two day event brought together a myriad of theoretical perspectives and material approaches through four distinct tracks: Science and Technology, Sustainable Futures, Craft and the Handmade and Enterprise/Industry/Business.

2016

The purpose of this study is to investigate the meanings of modern day textile hobby crafts for makers who engage with crafts as a creative leisure outlet. The research is embodied in the term unraveling, which conceptualizes the study both as a means to reflect on the meanings of embodied practice, and as a way to open up new perspectives on making. The theoretical framework reviews contemporary textile hobby crafting culture and uncovers how it has found new meaning in recreational leisure, gendered domesticity and individual resourcefulness linked with Do-It-Yourself. The thesis consists of three sub-studies. The first level of examination is based on interviews with craftspeople coming from different cultural backgrounds, who were asked to talk about how they see the meaning and value of craft making in their lives. Secondly, textile hobby craft making is approached as a collective practice through a study conducted with an open-curricula craft group. Thirdly, the story of a cra...