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.
