This September, we are thrilled to be hosting an online talk from Weaver and fibre artist Susie Taylor. Susie combines her background in Art, Design and Craft to create abstract and dimensional textiles. She also collaborates with industry to produce modern, functional textiles that reflect the influence of the Bauhaus on her practice.
During her talk, Susie will cover 2 significant themes, which have led to key pieces of her woven art. One is the story of her “weaving origami”; how that all came to be, and what it means to her. The story starts when she was exposed to Japanese culture and origami as a child, and then ends with Susie creating a piece of woven origami that hangs in the city of Muko, Japan. This story is about the full circle that an early exposure to origami had on her creative journey. The second story is about how Susie wove with the same threading on her loom for 4 years (between 2017-2021) by just pulling different warps through and changing the tie ups. This story is about a constant push to dig deeper, not wider, into the same construction (4 block double weave) that yielded many different outcomes. Susie will also talk about how she embraces the limitations of shaft loom weaving, and how she incorporates loom control structures and hand manipulation to push her loom to function more like a Jacquard loom.
After a recent move from California to upstate New York, Susie is now threading the loom to complete a large commission based on her work ‘Social Fabric‘. While this specific construction is on her loom, she also intends to produce a smaller series that explores large scale weave structures, dimensional effects and bold colour interactions. If you can’t join us live on the 25th September, we will share a recording of the talk with ticket holders to view for a limited period after the event.
About Susie She has exhibited her work in the US and in international fiberart and contemporary textile biennials in China and Ukraine. Her work was recently included in Weaving at Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students at Black Mountain College Museum (Asheville, North Carolina), and her piece, Social Fabric, is part of Beyond: Tapestry Expanded at the Peeler Art Center at DePauw University (Greencastle, Indiana), which runs Aug – Dec 2024. She received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from UCLA and has taught at Penland School of Arts & Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts and Tyler School of Art. She maintains a studio in Rochester, New York and is represented by Johansson Projects in Oakland, California.