Inspired! Music and Art in Fibre - Exhibition and Book

Each year, members of the International Freeform Crochet Guild set a challenge. This challenge is to create a piece of freeform crochet using a chosen theme. The pieces are finished and photos are sent via email to the organisers, and an online exhibition and book are created. None of the pieces are shown publicly until  the exhibition and book are ready, which this year was July 1st.




This year the theme was Inspired! Music and Art in Fibre. As usual it presented me with a huge dilemma. The biggest influences throughout my life have always been art and music. So I had to think up of a way of combining the two.

I must admit its been a long time since I really had a keen interest in any art that was non-fibre related. I know, totally biased! But since moving out of Dublin, away from regular gallery visits, and having a child, my time is very limited, and  unless it is something that really catches my eye, I haven't really bothered. So, to be inspired again, I began to look through my books (which are again totally biased towards craft), and then online.

 

Miró  

As a youngster, I adored art, and art history, and gobbled up the work of artists such as Miró, Delauney, Braque, Rothko. I was very inspired by the Bauhaus, and the artists associated with it. The sense of art, craft and design interlinked, the practical skills, the design, theories and the camaraderie of the artists involved; Klee, Kandinsky, Albers, Itten,... to name a few.

Kandinsky

 By looking over these artists work, it reminded me of how much I liked art, abstract in particular, colours and lines. I suppose its why woven tapesty became my second love. (Crochet being my first!). This type of abstract art is easily translated into tapestry. (My diploma thesis might have included the influence of textiles, in particular tapestry, on a variety of well know artists...). And then, looking into these artists again,  I realised how many of them, themselves, were influenced by music. Either they played music or had a great love for music. Two birds, one crochet hook!

Klee

So, lace being my medium of choice theses days, I decided to try make an 'abstract' piece. Again, as with most of my entries, not as freeform as it could have been, but as spontaneous as I could be, working with lace. I decided to keep it just black and white because colour was very distracting, I wanted to concentrate more on the lines themselves. I'm still enjoying messing with the 'hanger' technique of framing that I had done for the Prudence Mapstone exhibition in Australia. So, here is the piece I made for the 2012 International Freeform Crochet Guild online exhibition and book..

You can view the online exhibition here http://www.freeformcrochet.com/2012/index.html

And again this year, the book is available to order from Blurb, all monies raised go to charity.

www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/detail/3366244