I was fortunate enough to spend my summer
in America, and the experience of spending so much time in huge, buzzing cities
has influenced the beginning of my final year work. The monstrous buildings,
bright colours and busy, energetic city life has drawn me back to looking at
Urban Landscape; the concept of the live project I did with Dashing Tweeds in
second year.
From the experience that I had as well as analsing
the photographs I had taken in New York, I chose to create a word palette in
which to initially work from, as I thought this would help me narrow down the
areas in which I wanted to focus my work.
Architecture.
Reflection. Pattern. Scale. Form. Repetition. Linear. Light and dark. Old and new.
Flashes of colour.
The idea of comparing the flat, duller
colours of the old buildings next to the bright, shiny qualities of the newer
skyscrapers lead to me creating collages of painted surfaces and found pieces
of double yellow lines to try and develop this idea further, as well as a
colour palette in which to create a warp from. Alongside this, I started to
build a list of qualities that I thought might influence my work from a
different angle, looking at atmosphere created rather than physical things that
can be seen.
Busy.
Fast. Movement. Dirty. Grungy. Energy. A city that doesn’t sleep and is always
on the go.
I think initially the collages helped me to
create a warp in a short period of time, because the flat colours suggest that
the yarn choice should be wool, where as the brighter colours suggested to be
developed in cotton, hence the combination of the two. However, I wasn’t
getting the sense of movement or urban city life from the fabric I began to
weave. It felt too clean and blocky and the weight of the fabric was too fine;
it didn’t reflect my initial starting point of a sturdy, buzzing city.
In order to get a better sense of movement and
to start making my collages appear more abstract, I scanned them in and started
to play with them on Photoshop so I was looking more in to the blending of the colours
rather than blocks of colour I initially created.
I think these work better as colour palettes
due to the darker, dirtier qualities found within the bright and dip dying my
own yarns with this in mind helped to move away from the bright and dainty to a
gloomier more robust looking fabric which begins to link back to my concept of
urban landscape.