lilly frances beards

contemporary textile student @ manchester school of art

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warp/weft pixel gifs exploring colour, motion, and diffusion

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68 frames | Processing 39 frames | Processing

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plastic + satin

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WARNING: UNAUTHORISED INTERFERENCE WITH THIS SIGN COULD MAKE YOU LIABLE TO PROSECUTION AND HEAVY FINES

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"w o m a n

the word feels strange in my mouth

heavy with history and expectation

laden with lust and power

warm and homely

cold and lonely

i knew i'd grow up

but not like this"

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EXHIBITION PROGRAMME & CONFESSION ZINE

CONFESSION ZINE - PRINT LAYOUT

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EXHIBITION VISUALISATION WALKTHROUGH - THE SIMS 4

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USER EXPERIENCE - EXHIBITION INFO/SUBMISSION QR CODE

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FRANCESCA CAPONE: WORDS AND THREAD - hosted by Portland State University's Textile Arts faculty

This talk was a publically accessible event hosted by PSU Textile Arts, where weaver and academic Francesca Capone shared details about her practice and long term project Weaving Language. As much of my work this module has been text-based, I thought learning about Francesca's practice would be hugely insightful and inspiring. At the end of the talk, there was opportunity to ask questions. During my CP1 module, I discovered a deep interest in modern political subversion of traditional craft, and felt that Francesca, working as a weaver and academic concerned with modern poetry, may have some interesting insights on the inherently political nature of her practice. A video clip of the question I asked and Francesca's response is above, and the transcript below.

Annin Barrett: So this is a question from Lilly - "thank you so much for this wonderful presentation, very inspiring. Do you see your work as political at all? I think both modern weaving and poetry can be inherently subversive. Essentially what I'm trying to say is, do you view your practice as embracing tradition or subverting it? Lots of love from England", that's from Lilly.

Francesca Capone: Thank you Lilly. I do see it as political work, I do think that it's sort of uncovering and acknowledging the work of marginalised people, and establishing it - or, crediting it, rather, not establishing it, it's already been established - crediting it as something totally legitimate and influential over so much the shape that writing has taken today. I think it's difficult to work around this topic without it feeling political for sure. That's a great observation.

Full talk available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhNKCezGr7Q

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custom content for exhibition visualisation using s4studio

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EVERYTHING I WISH I'D SAID - exhibition proposal

Everything I Wish I'd Said is an interactive textile exhibition focused around a series of six large-scale woven tapestries. The six tapestries are to be hung on the ceiling of a small room, with the intention that the visitors will walk between the tapestries and touch them, look at them closely, and consider how the messages woven into them relate to their own life. On the edges of the room a series of rugs - one in the style of a long woven sampler, one in the style of a traditional domestic rug, and one circular tufted rug to increase the tactility and dimension of the exhibition. Each rug also contains messaging, aligning with the confessional text-based nature of the six tapestries.

At the natural end of the visitor's 'journey' through the tapestries, a submission box invites them to write and submit an anonymous confession. Towards the closing time of the exhibition each day, the box is emptied and the confessions are taped up onto the gallery walls, a process which visitors are invited to watch and partake in. The intention is that the walls will eventually be completely full with visitors' anonymous confessions, which become part of the exhibition itself. The longer the exhibition runs, the more deeply it explores communication, trauma, messaging and the human experience.

Keywords: confession, hidden messaging, interactivity, tactility, letterwriting, communication

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Technical File - Knit

YARN QUALITIES RESEARCH

PROTEIN FIBRES

Protein fibres are animal based and dye well with acid dyes.

Wool Pros: warm, long-lasting, easy to clean, soft, antibacterial, holds colour Cons: can felt at high temperatures, questionable ethics when not ethically sourced, can be itchy, absorbs odour

Silk Pros: luxurious, smooth, lustrous, strong Cons: requires the killing of the pupae inside the cocoon, shows wear and tear easily

Hair fibres (cashmere, angora) Pros: soft, luxurious Cons: often unethically sourced, expensive

PLANT FIBRES

Plant fibres are plant based and dye well with procion and direct dyes.

Cotton Pros: affordable, versatile, soft, machine washable Cons: often unethical crop, shrinks, creases easily

Linen Pros: environmentally friendly, cool, durable, soft Cons: expensive, creases easily

SYNETHIC FIBRES

Synthetic fibres are man-made and dye well with disperse dyes.

Rayon (semi-synthetic) Pros: cheap, versatile, drapes well, breathable, blends well with other fibres Cons: ages poorly, difficult to care for and maintain, manufacturing process is very polluting

Nylon Pros: good stretch, durable, versatile Cons: derived from pretroleum, melts at high temperatures

Acrylic Pros: cheap, durable, can be very soft Cons: derived from petroleum, no special properties compared to natural yarns, not breathable

Hand Knitting Stitches

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Technical File - Print

CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH PRINT APPLIED TO DIFFERENT END USES

From left to right top row: Athletic wear, Quilted coat, Cushion, Handprinted T-shirt From left to right bottom now: Lampshade, Bedding, Blanket, Dress

CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH MY DESIGNS IN THE REAL WORLD

After looking at various brands creating printed textiles, I most related to Cold Picnic, a New York-based textile company creating rugs, blankets and cushions. I feel that my work is quite textural and I can see it in a homeware context. I created a handful of mockups to envision my work on various different home textiles.

WARDROBE ANALYSIS

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Reflections from Drawing Week 2

Friday, 12th February 2021

The second drawing week of the Sampling module was focused on creating more three-dimensional work and exploring form, texture and shape. I decided to continue my work looking at the interconnection of lines, inspired by my photographs of yarn and subsequent motifs from these images.

Previous work - inspiration in drawing week

I began working small-scale with paperclips, bending and twisting them with pliers and connecting them together, creating a form reminiscent of my yarn motifs. I was pleased with the outcome of this as I liked being able to completely change the form of such a common object and turn it into something new, combining shapes to create something larger and more complex. This was a great starting point for me, as it gave me ideas to increase scale and work with different materials in a similar way. As I progressed throughout drawing week, my initial paperclip experimentations were a great basis for my work.

Informed by my paperclip samples, I then worked larger-scale using thick wire. This was a slightly different process with different results, as instead of twisting and connecting several small objects, I was working with a long, continuous piece of wire. This presented its own challenges and rewards - whilst the wire was somewhat more unwieldy than the paperclips, I really liked the look of a continous length of wire being twisted into several different shapes and intertwined with another different colour of wire. This larger piece felt more organic to me than the paperclip piece - the continous length of wire flowed more, and I didn’t have to combat the awkward bends and creased of the paperclip when creating my shapes as I was just working from a straight piece of wire. Working on this piece allowed me to further explore the ideas of interconnection, and provided great inspiration to me throughout my project.

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Reflections from Print Rotation

Thursday, 4th February 2021

Working on print rotation has been a really enjoyable experience, despite not being able to go into the studio and access the print labs. I still feel that I learned a lot in terms of print theory, motif development, colour palette, shape, and compostion.

STARTING POINTS To begin the print rotation, I took photos of my space. I’ve been living alone in my flat in central Manchester this term, which has been a blessing and a curse; I’ve been able to spread all my work and yarns all over the front room, but it’s also been lonely because I can’t go on campus, I’m furloughed from my retail job, and I can’t really see anyone. This loneliness has definitely come through into my work in interesting ways, especially my experiments into confessional sketchbooking.

My favourite photos of my flat are of my hand-dyed yarns - these were dyed with food waste, and since I have no real means to dry yarns in my small flat, they ended up strewn everywhere I could hang them. I also enjoyed the photos of my busy windowsill filled with books, plants, and my own work, however I saw less potential to develop motifs from the windowsill images as there was less definitive shape and colour than in the photos of my yarns. 

MOTIF & COMPOSITION CREATION Creating and developing motifs hasn’t really been a deliberate part of my practice before, so this was a part of print rotation I found really interesting and something that helped me expand my way of thinking about my designs. I loved pulling shapes and forms out of my drawings and abstracting them into motifs, creating patterns, and merging different ideas together digitally. It was a really freeing process that inspired a lot of new ideas that I wouldn’t have considered without the dissection of my drawings that motif creation forced me to do.

FINAL THOUGHTS Although print isn’t an area I think I’m likely to choose as my main specialism, I was very surprised at how much I loved the print rotation and how creatively freeing and inspiring learning the ‘print way of thinking’ has been. I will definitely carry the things I’ve learned during this rotation through into my wider degree and practice, especially the process of motif creation. Before this rotation, I didn’t think I was going to incorporate print into my practice at all going into L5 and beyond, however now I’m very eager to get into the studio and start printing for real, applying the skills I’ve learned in this rotation and applying them to my own, more fibre-based practice.

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Self-Evaluation: Origins

Origins has been an amazing introduction to textile design at degree level. I loved how drawing-focused this module was, and how I was encouraged to let my drawings and collages inform my weave and embroidery work. Before this module, I wasn’t very confident in my drawing skills but the varied nature of the drawing tasks set in Origins has helped me to begin to develop my drawing style and be less hesitant when making marks.

The most rewarding part of Origins was working on the Harris table looms during the weave rotation. Learning to read weave notation and operate an 8-shaft loom was really fun and I can see myself continuing to experiment with weave as a large part of my practice as the course develops. Unfortunately I didn’t get to continue my work on the table looms for the second week of the rotation so couldn't develop the designs I had begun to make by embedding patterns into my weave which were inspired by my earlier drawings. However, I was able to continue some experimentation at home on my hand-made lap loom. Although less detail was possible with my lap loom compared to the table loom because there were fewer warp threads, I was still able to interpret some of my ideas into weave.

However, I struggled when working on the embroidery & mixed media rotation. I found it difficult to translate my drawings and collage into embroidery and wasn’t very inspired - I struggled developing my ideas and felt like this rotation was my weakest point.

Overall, I loved the Origins unit - especially being limited to the set palette. This was really rewarding as I was working with colours I normally wouldn’t have gravitated towards and really enjoyed the results.