Sydney Design 06
Among the many objects from the industrial and mass-produced to the hand made showcased at Sydney Design 06, Droog Design’s rag chair is just one of a number showing creative re-use of materials. More Droog Designs.
Sydney Design has many events for those able to reach Sydney, Australia, in August, but the program has links to websites that can be explored from anywhere in the world to see the fruit of numerous imaginations.
One of the associated events at the Object Gallery involves several exhibitions, including 8 Ounces by Ahn Wells, bright and oversized crocheted teacups Wells crocheted with her mother. The work embodies universal concerns and intentions: time spent with family; learning craft from a master, and the importance of technique and process.
Also at the Object Gallery: The ideas and objects that weave throughout a matter of time invite us to think about the relationships between time and making, materiality, ritual, the present and memory. Concerns not only relevant to exhibited artists, but to anyone making craft, whether quilt or sock or embroidery. Many of the things we craft could have their purpose supplied by industrial objects, but that is not enough reason to stop our creativity, imagination and joy in the work of our hands.
How do you see one or more of those features in relation to your crafting? – time and making, materiality, ritual, the present and memory? I make quilts when I could easily buy mass-produced bedcoverings, but the quilts resonate as bought stuff cannot. I love fabric and buttons – just yesterday I was running my hands through a huge bowl of vintage buttons in a shop, just for the pleasure of their feel, sound and something else that’s irresistible about buttons. There are all sorts of rituals associated with my crafting – not to confine it, but sometimes it’s my hands’ wisdom – they know how to hold a quilt and sew a binding, how to steady a ruler or control fabric through a sewing machine – and sometimes ways of working that I’ve arrived at and remained with. And memory? Everything I make conjures memories in all sorts of ways.
What about you? Is one of those in particular the ‘engine’ of your crafting? Looking forward to reading your comments.
August 21st, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I just ran across this site tonight, the bit about the buttons, I know that feeling. Do you suppose we have tribal memories or some such thing? I feel it when I sew, and sometimes when I draw. Not deja vu, but the feeling I have been doing this for a thousand years.