Hannah Waldron

A couple of weeks on from returning from my trip to New York, and then a trip to Bristol and Cornwall straight after, I am now back in one spot, and all that has occurred in the past month is beginning to be absorbed.

I was lucky in that a great deal of the exhibitions there seemed to cross over in a serendipitous way, in an area I find exciting in Art history; German Expressionism at MoMA, The Great Uprising at The Guggenheim, Sonia Delauney at Cooper Hewitt Design museum, the general collection at the Neue Galerie. The overriding sensation I was left with, especially with the incredible Sonia Delauney show, was the bold grasp with colour the early 20th century artists had. I also saw some beautiful and colourful Peruvian weavings in the flesh at the Met, which added to this feeling that I will probably now attribute to New York as a whole.

So on my return I have been keen to try and do something in colour, I wanted to make something quickly as a sort of knee jerk reaction to everything.

Working often in indian ink, I have sometimes had misfortunes with spillages, and indian ink is a terrible thing to spill. I had such an incident on opening my suitcase in new york. A new dress beared the brunt, so when I returned to London I set about trying to repair the damage, after a few experiments I used the indian ink mixed with water to dye the fabric, from a nude colour to a silver tone. Continuing on from the bands I have been weaving before I designed a segmented design, with the intention to wear it as a belt to go with the dress, which now being quite dull and uneven in tone, would benefit from flat bold colour. For the colour choice I took a cue from the colours I normally wear as accessories, bright primary colours, and also from the first sample I ever made weaving.

I am eager to explore designing and making more bands, tapes and belts and also to investigate dyeing techniques with fabric. There is another weaving project I have my mind on, which will be a longterm project, to create weavings and furnishings for the barn my parents are renovating in the Brecon Beacons in Wales. My father is a brilliant architect and this is a project he has long dreamed of doing and has been working on for the last couple of years. It is wonderful to see it being realised. I will talk more about it soon because there are so many exciting features and elements to his design. The barn has been untouched for many years and the landscape has grown up amongst it, which is being incorperated into the design rather than overcome, this balance of the man-made/ creativity and nature is perhaps something I want to look at in the weavings. He has recently set up his own architectural practice which you can visit here where you can see more about this project. In July I will visit the barn and begin the process of setting about it all.