In Search of Textures
I love working with fabrics, especially upholstery fabrics, because of their materiality. Painting and collaging are great, too, of course, but fabrics offer both a palette and a tactile body, a combination of colors and textures that I find irresistible. They are tangible objects, something you can hold and feel, and therefore speak to multiple senses in ways that other fine art materials don’t.
All of my art quilts, from the very beginning, explore what happens when you juxtapose fabrics with different textures and feel, or when you combine them with other materials. In the last few months, I felt a need to take this even further. I wanted to enhance the textures more, in new, more exaggerated ways. It’s been a challenging year, and I somehow felt a need to touch. There is something very comforting about textures, something calming and grounding, and that is something I badly needed.
Making a Sensory Collage
People like sensory blankets because they reduce anxiety and help regulate the nervous system. I decided to make a sensory collage instead. I began by going over my fabric stash (a relaxing, fun activity all on its own!). I decided to go with a warm, spring-colors palette of purples, magentas and oranges, a palette I used in some earlier works.
Warm colors cheer the heart, don’t they? I deliberately picked textiles with strong and contradictory textures: a luscious velvet, a smooth, crispy silk; some beautifully-colored felt, shiny rayon, and home decor textiles with different weaves. I even added a piece of gel-plate printed cotton. On a base of delicate black tule I created a small weaving with some rough yarn. I wrapped sari silk ribbons around cords, securing them with colorful embroidery floss (using the technique I used for my Flow series). In addition, I pleated a piece of fabric to bring in additional texture. I auditioned different fabrics and played with their placing for quite some time, as I always do.
At some point I decided to add synthetic netting as well, for it enriched the textural offering and brought in some transparency and depth, which I liked. After I finalized the composition, I stitched everything together by machine, and went on to one of my favorite parts in the creative process: the selection of embroidery thread!
Hand stitches always add character personality, I think. Not to mention even more texture!
A couple of pieces of tule in different weights created a bit of nuanced shading. As a final touch I added some wooden beads.
When Sensory Collage was finished, I proceeded to prepare the substrate I planned to mount it on. This substrate was the bottom part of a wooden box that came with one of my kids’ toys. The toy left our house long ago, but I kept the box “just in case,” as it seemed like it might be useful one day… Well, this day has finally come! I panted the box black, and glued the collage piece on top.
The finished Sensory Collage
The finished piece is 16″ x 17.” It turned out just as I hoped it would, a feast for the eyes as well as for the touch:
Love it! What a fascinating idea Zwia.
Thanks! I’ve been experimenting a lot in the last few months, but there were also long periods of no art at all.