Nov 25, 20203 min read

The Who, The What, The What-What

The Who: Hey there, my name is Nicki. I am a student of textile craft & design at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada.

The What: I am starting this blog as a sort of scientific diary to capture my research findings for my final 4th year capstone. If you choose to follow, it is here where you will find all the details of my weaving and dyeing experiments, alongside the emotional ramblings of an artist unhinged. The journey promises to be, at least, a wonderful outline of how to get lost. And honestly sometimes thats all we need: to get lost in creativity!

The What-What: I thought it would be helpful to start things off with a quick outline of my capstone concept so that you have a fighting chance at following my creative excursion. Overall, my concept is still being developed and refined, however, there are some fundamental themes that are worth noting.

Decay/Aging: Last year I started playing around with rust dyeing and weaving with dried plant material (see below for pictures of the two previous projects that inspired my capstone direction). I become fascinated by the idea of decay in textile making. In a more personal way, I also found empowerment and comfort in the way nature seems to value decay, in a way I currently don't value my own aging body. I want to explore the power of decay as symbolism, in the art of making, as a material resource, and reframe my own connection to aging.
Nature: Nature plays a big role in my life. I find being immersed in nature soothing and spend a lot of time with my family and dog outside in the wilderness. We collect lots of plant matter, flowers to dry, pieces of bark and treasures like old bee hives or nests. I go to nature to hear my intuition, but I also go to nature for answers. There is so much inspiration in nature. New perspectives. Old age secrets. Resourceful ideas. Hard life lessons. Observing nature, especially in its moments of transition (growth and decay), yields a lifetime of sage advice.
Form: Form is physical evidence you can grab and hold on to. Form is living and breathing, changing and adjusting. Form can show growth, form can show decay. Form will be a keen focus in my capstone. How form changes with life cycles. How form can tell a story. These are things I hope to explore through structural weaving.
Structured Chaos: Making and building is an act of structured chaos. And we, the makers and builders, are the composers of this chaos. Organized by our own madness, but organized none the less. The material we work with needs math and science. It needs expertise. It needs a relationship of familiarity with our hands and our minds. But what we make, what we create with that formal knowledge is bounded by none. I want my work to reflect this paradox. To show that there exists a relationship between the formal knowledge of working with textiles, and the simultaneous disregard for such formalities.

To summarize, for now, my capstone is:

a visual investigation into the nature of aging and decay from a scientific, cultural, and personal perspective. With nature as my central muse and weaving as my craft, I will be using natural fibres, aged plant material and structural weaving techniques to bring my vision to life.

Thanks for joining along!

Holding On

Series of dried flower, wall weavings

Materials: wool, linen, recycled and foraged flowers