Project 7 - Research Point

The Work Of The Textile Artist

The work of artists, designers and craftspeople is so tightly wound together that it has become very difficult to give the 'correct' label to one person.  It seems to me that the majority of people working in these ways take on so many 'jobs' themselves that to label them only as an artist or only as a designer is somehow belittling what they actually undertake.

Unfortunately nowadays it feels that labelling someone as an 'artist' is somehow insinuating that they are hands off, an artist in the modern way comes up with an idea and employs a team of more skilled craftspeople to make it a reality.  Equally to call someone a designer gives the idea that they sit at a computer and use expensive software to create an image that another maker will bring into existence.  Even more unfortunately using the term 'craft' calls to mind cross stitching and scrapbooking and that slightly twee approach to the handmade.

I think perhaps some new word is needed, some official job titles, less unwieldy than artist-designer-maker!

The two textile artists I have chosen are Abigail Doan and Amy Gross.  I struggled for a long time with this, trying to decide whether either or neither might be considered textiles artists, eventually deciding that as they both work with fibre and textile techniques that they must, therefore, be textile artists.

Abigail Doan calls herself an environmental fibre artist.  She works with recycle, reclaimed and found fibre.  She is best known for her Fibre Flotsam bundles and art installations.  She works as an advocate for sustainable fashion and eco-friendly textiles.  Her pieces are made from the discarded and disused and serve as 'a means to create sustainable solutions and visual links to the global challenges we collectively face.'

Amy Gross calls herself a mixed media artist rather than a textile artist but she works with fabrics, bead, applique and embroidery so to my mind she qualifies to be included here.

Her interest lies in taking a man-made material or item and turning it into something that looks natural.  She creates tiny environments and landscapes of roots, pods, insects and flowers in free standing sculptures.  Her work is about transformation.  Biomimicry has always appealed to me, something completely created but looking like it grew from the ground, and this is what appeals to me about the work of Amy Gross.

Both of these women are 'artists' but also far more than that, they design, they craft, they create.  Maybe textile art isn't accepted by the art world in general at an equal standing with other creative arts, but I'm not convinced it really has to be.  Although textile art might be seen as a specialization, there are so many smaller specializations within it that I feel it is perfectly able to stand alongside Fine Art as another umbrella term rather than being encompassed as all being art.