13/10/2020
Jennifer Davies has always been attracted to all forms of fiber, especially paper. She says, "Creating with paper feels like dancing with a partner, the material itself leading me through a series of new steps. I start with an idea but give myself over to a process that is intuitive, and at the best of times, playful."
She is inspired by nature – cracked rock walls, delicate spider webs, and the phases of the moon – are all forms and patterns she uses as sources. Along with image references she wants her work to have a strong physical presence that expands into multiple associations.
Jennifer likes to push paper to extremes by folding, twisting, and dyeing it for long periods of time in buckets. she enjoys unplanned consequences and end up with paper that looks aged, and highly textured. The sheets are then layered into works that suggest aerial views, or maps, or the surface of the earth.
She also makes her own Japanese paper and is interested in the different characteristic of pulps. Some are coarse and thick, some creamy and smooth, some shrink dramatically when dry. After the long process of cooking, cleaning, and beating the mulberry branches, a fluffy long fibered pulp results. She dips weavings into the slurry of pulp and water to make lacy nets, or use it more traditionally for sheet forming.
Through the exposure to Asian materials, Jennifer has gravitated toward Japanese fiber traditions, with the emphasis on natural color and strong materiality. She often uses the scroll format and employs stitching, weaving, and wrapping techniques that allows her to bridge the gap between craft traditions and those of fine art.
Some examples of her works:
Kozo Paper
Featured snippet from the web
Kozo (Mulberry) bark is used in the majority of washi today. Kozo became a cultivated plant used especially for paper and cloth making. With long fibers, 100% Kozo papers are strong and durable, used commonly in conservation & repair, woodblock and other printmaking.
Anna Wagner-Ott
Sculptural Assemblages and Under the Covers
Sewing, knitting and crocheting skills have been transmitted from grandmothers to mothers and then to daughters for centuries. Hundreds of squares stitched into coverings have kept multiple families safe and warm. Over time, as those blankets were constantly being used, they have slowly faded and disintegrated, their beauty becoming closely related to history and time.
I learned my sewing skills from my mother and other female quilt makers. In 2016, I returned to creating sewn blocks of threads on my sewing machine and connecting them to form weavings reminiscent assemblages. Coming full circle with the act of sewing and weaving, choosing the colours and stitching intricate fragments has become a meditative, exhilarating and mesmerizing process. I bind fabrics, tie threads and paint the surfaces to simulate decomposing surfaces. I sometimes use hot pigmented wax so that the segments become enhanced, hardened and protected, a form of mummification.
The “Under the Covers” assemblages are created on a simple wooden frame loom. The hand made look is important for these new works. Similar to the intent for the “Interlaced Series” I wanted to be able to vary the weaving in its open and closed areas and the actual creation of the the segments has become a meditative process.
My focus is not about the materiality and the beauty of weavings as a covering but about feelings when being trapped under different forms of coverings. At times my weavings contain tight threaded links that are stiff, unyielding and no longer representing a safe and warm place to hide under. Then at other times the segments are so dense that little light can penetrate. A symbiotic relationships between yarns, colors, patterns, textures, light and shadows.
While creating this series of works, I try to connect to the pain of loss and insecurity, to the covering up of truths, to the inherent vulnerability of life and death, to disintegration and impermanence, but also to sparks of beauty often found in the processes of change and fading away. My continually trying to hold together pieces of my experiences that I have lost. I build up my weavings and often destroy them - in one way the reconstruction of my psyche - a destroying and reclaiming of myself.Interlaced Narrative
From the lakeside studio I am drawn into nature and inspired. Such beauty, light, and wonder leave me humbled. And yet, as I take the inspiration of the landscape and begin to paint, it is not simple beauty that emerges. My act of painting pushes me beyond the lovely, the easy. Just as nature destroys itself to be reborn, my work undergoes a similar natural process of evolution, death, and rebirth.
I begin painting a background that has been influenced by the marvel of nature such as the shining sunset reflecting in the water or billowing clouds moving across the sky. Once the background painting is completed I begin to disrupt that cherished image of a memory by meticulously painting lines into a woven textile covering. At times the intersecting lines are painted tightly forcing viewers to stay on the outside and barely able to see the landscape underneath. The covering suffocates the land and it can not breathe. Then in another painting the web splits open to larger passageways, the background comes to the foreground, (a play between positive and negative) and one can see larger vistas of what lies beneath. While immersing myself in painting I think about whether barriers act to protect or keep us isolated, or whether coverings keep us warm, safe, hidden or become suffocating? The work has evolved into a complex dialogue surrounding identity in relation to physical and psychological barriers.
Detritus
My detritus series focuses on the beauty which lies between the symbiotic process of birth and death. During my walks in the forest I take photos of fragments of silver-green lichens and blue mosses on tree barks, or decaying plants along the forest floor. Back in the studio I use those photographs as inspiration. My painting process is complex and involves many steps from constructing woven cotton thread-like grids that I create on a sewing machine and then burying them in hot wax and pulling them out before the wax cools. My goal is to combine paint, threads and wax to simulate the process of the disintegration of life forms.Aimee lee is an artist, papermaker, writer, and the leading hanji researcher and practitioner in North America. Her Fulbright research on Korean paper led to her award-winning book Hanji Unfurled (The Legacy Press) and the first US hanji studio in Cleveland. Through hand papermaking I ask what connects us as humans and how we live among others. In a water and cellulose centered process, I work in changing seasons and far-flung locations with plants and materials at hand. From each unique batch of paper, I make books, hangings, sculptures, installations, or whatever the paper needs to become. Often I tear apart my paper to reconstruct it because fragments provide more fruitful challenges than perfect sheets. I source materials and techniques from my Korean heritage, though my interest in plants, colors, and traditions derives from global fiber methods. Through artists’ books, I began to make paper and fell in love with the constant motion of water, the ecologically sound process of manufacture, and the variety of wild materials I could source. When I studied papermaking history, I noticed a gap when it came to Korean paper—hanji—and decided to fill it.
During my fieldwork in Korea I discovered more than paper. I learned to make, fuse, texture, cord, weave, and dye hanji. In the mountains, I harvested wild Korean mulberry trees to extract their long fibers. These strands became luminous paper with a history of becoming objects for survival, ritual, and pleasure. I create contemporary versions, like a garment patched from scraps, a woven bird inspired by wedding ducks, or a commonplace book with multiple narrators, excavating my entire heritage to reveal cultures and stories we rarely see or read.
STUDIO PRACTICE:
The white shirt was placed folded in the wax. Once removed it was placed on a flat surface to allow the wax to pool but I decided to use my heat gun to reheat the wax and allowing it to run down the folded shirt in a 45 deg angle instead. I prefer the dripping to the pooling effect for some reason.
This time I pulled the shirt from the wax and slipped it onto the hanger allowing the wax to drip as it was suspended.
This shirt has been draped over the corner of a chair. The base of the shirt has responded to the flatness of the floor. Loving how the shirt stands upright in the most abnormal way!
Still fluffing around with this scarf - decided to revisit the draping over the corner of a chair and allowing the wax to trickle down creating the lovely rivulets.
This required a certain amount of bravery as I felt it was sacrilege to to the books! So what was I thinking and why did I do this? For me, books are (WERE) one the means of information but with the changes in technology (and the continued development of the feminist movement) they are slowly becoming a thing of the past - a little like our traditional roles in society.
Playing around with props like the random road cones that have made their way onto my front lawn (my son!) Rope; definition - a group of yarns, plies, fibers or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, string, and twine.
Rope was something my Dad always had in the garage, it come with us on holiday - it was something considered important for survival in the event of a natural disaster. It can be used in bush craft, shelter-building, towing/dragging and hunting. I guess I view rope as a "man's tool" for that reason.The irony is, the very tool that is used in survival is also used to take life. New Zealand has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Suicide rates for men are more than twice as high as for women, the social layers worst affected are the most oppressed sections of the working class. This might be controversial but I'm sharing it anyway... I have danced with suicide and mental health disorders so have empathy/understanding for those who struggle with life/being in this world.
Museums and art galleries are both a mirror and a record of human experience. Human experiences are not neat and tidy. In fact, they can be complicated, full of controversy and a reflection of society.
