I didn’t always work in textile collage. I trained as a Graphic Designer. I spent three years learning about fonts, kerning, grids and prepping files for print. It was okay, I was good at it. But I really missed the tactile feeling of making something in real life.
In my last year of my bDes I decided to switch my major to illustration and focus on watercolour paintings. Spending all my days working in front of a computer didn’t seem appealing. As an illustrator I would be painting and drawing and creating work for art directors. As my final year was coming to an end and I was about to graduate, I had two classes that sparked my interest in sculpture. In one class I created girly analogue video game characters for a gaming company (they were not well received :P). Another class I worked with a local Catholic School Board to create relief sculptures for the exterior of a new high school.
Those classes gave me the confidence and permission to try something new.
I went back to my 80’s child crafting roots and broke out the wire, fabric, hot glue and styrofoam and started creating these cute graphic sculptures. I progressed into bigger more complex pieces and realized my home was too small to store all these new soft sculptures. Out of the desire to save space I decided that I would take this style 2D, and work flat.
Collaging with fabric felt very natural to me. I love combining different colours, patterns and textures of fabric in interiors so this new method of working felt like combining my art and interior design worlds together. The large scale and dramatic colour I was now able to play with felt like an extension of the watercolour style I had developed. It took me until this year to figure out how to bring the mediums of watercolour and textiles together but I am happy with the results and can’t wait to see what comes out of this new methodology.
