Hannah Waldron

Computer Arts feature 'The future of handmade'

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:50:00 -0400

KURUKURU and Venice were recently featured in an interesting article written by Angharad Lewis about the future of the handmade in Computer Arts. It was really good to read about the process of other featured artists/designers and hear their thoughts and to see a discussion about where we are heading collectively in terms of craft and the physical manifestion of ideas.

Financial times Magazine feature

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:36:00 -0400

The Map Tapestries were recently featured in the FT magazine following the exhibition at Spazio Rossana Orlandi at Milan Design Week.

Here’s the full interview if you are interested in reading a bit more about the process behind it. Many thanks to freelance journalist Victoria Maw for the feature.

How were the tapestries woven? What type of loom? What type of yarn?

The map tapestries were woven on a simple small rigid heddle loom, which makes it easy to transport around. For these pieces I used a variety of yarns, (such as silk, linen, cotton,)being led by colours and lustres for different parts of the story within the weaving.

Could you give me a few examples of the scenes depicted in any one of the journeys?

Manhattan, Berlin, Venice and a small onsen (hot spring) town in Japan called Minakami are depicted in the tapestry series. The latter, To Houshi Onsen describes the journey from Tokyo to this remote guesthouse and the experience of being at the Onsen. It begins with the rising sun and urban sprawl of Tokyo which through the clouds gives way to the fleeting landscapes of rural life as viewed from the bullet train. The next scene takes an aerial view of the path through the mountains up to the village minakami and then in the next frame there is the view from the lodgings,and centrally a stream running through the buildings. There follows the sensations of the hot spring and the meal that followed, and other observations of that experience. Finally there is the facades of the buildings itself and the journey back down the mountain.

I know we talked about expressing memories that weren’t necessary visual ones…sights and sounds etc? Could you just tell me a bit more about how you did that? I think I used the word “emotions” but you described it slightly differently?

I read a poster here in Milan yesterday that read “colour is music for the eyes” and I really liked that, weaving allows you to work with pure colour in a way that can be very evocative. We live in a time where photography is our go to for memory storage but I am interested in how experience can be documented and mapped in other ways, ways perhaps that explore more about the sensations, physicality, atmosphere and emotions of a place than the visuals. I think textiles lends itself well to expressing these qualities of memories and experiences.

NY Design week

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:39:00 -0400

I am pleased to announce that I will be exhibiting my Map Tapestries series as part of NY design week at Various Projects space. Here & There is a travel themed exhibition, bringing together hand crafted objects from all over the world that explore this subject at this point in time, and is organised by FIELD.

To Houshi Onsen

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:33:22 -0400

Off to Milan, words to follow…

Milan Furniture fair 2013

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 07:18:39 -0400

Section from ‘To Houshi Onsen’, 2013

On friday, work was completed on my latest tapestry ‘To Houshi Onsen’, a weaving that I began to plot out in early January and have been steadily working on since the start of february. ’To Houshi Onsen’ maps a journey I took last July from Tokyo to an onsen (hot spring) in the Gunma prefecture of Japan, the nearest town being Minakami.

This weaving is part of my Map Tapestries series and will be exhibited, along with the full series at the Milan Furniture fair at Rossana Orlandi Gallery from Monday, part of a group show with other students at Konstfack. I will be at the gallery from Thursday 11th until Sunday 14th so if you are in town for the fair and would like to see my weavings and say hello, that would be great,

I will post further about this weaving soon, but in the meantime here follows some info about the group show and look here for the full website for the exhibition.

Great website design and exhibition graphics from Tobias Gutmann.

When society is a slave to discount culture and fast consumption, as it seems we are today, the consequence is that our environment and ethical values pay a high price.

The flood of products is like the Internet, widely distributed and commercially available anytime, anywhere. As a result, it is not so unusual that young designers are reexamining the value of craft which they can perform themselves using historical references which provides more extracted information because it is analyzable and not based on speculation.

The 1962 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, James D. Watson, best known as a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, said in an interview that within the deluge of information, the current, mainstream education system focuses on mastering how to use, process and dispose of information. Since human nature has a tendency to accept things we have seen or heard, Watson warns that we are loosing the ability to “keep the facts and develop our own ideas.” *

It seems that young designers, who are trained to be sensitive and critical, find a way out of this problem themselves. While curating this exhibition, I have witnessed a strong tendency amongst this year’s students at Konstfack and that is, Facts = Craft.

Through the process of craft and critical thinking, they try to reach the unconscious soul of the design – the Anima. This working / thinking method of craft has a timely relevance to tackle our contemporary questions and sooner or later, they will also find other relevant methods and critical points depending on how our future looks, but they direct us to understand the current point of design history.

* From the book “Chino-Gyakuten” by Mayuni Yoshinari.

Map Tapestries is a series of tapestries that explore the documentation of experience and place as well as ideas of nomadic textile furniture. In numerous cultures throughout history, woven textiles have simultaneously acted as interior furnishings, vehicles for storytelling and symbols of value. Examples can be found from various nomadic tribes who explored the landscape around them. Waldron uses the cities she has visited and journeys undertaken in the past years such as New York, Venice and Berlin and also to Minakami, a little village in Japan. Within our drastic way of change and possibility to travel and view the world easily through satellite images, Waldron carefully examines and applies aspects of human interpretations of a landscape. The hangings, Map Tapestries become personal monuments to her experiences, but also a relevant vehicle for exploring the world around us.

Ikko Yokoyama
Head of Exhibitions at Konstfack

Arm loom experiments

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 13:29:00 -0500

Some double cloth experiments I’ve been working on using an Arm computer assisted loom. More soon…

Last post of 2012

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 17:24:56 -0500

My weavings KURUKURU, Kreuzberg and NYC section are currently being shown at Sky High Gallery in Milwaukee.

NOV-DEC 31, 2012

Sky High
2501 S. Howell Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207

+ NEW COLOURWAY OF MAZE is now available to buy. Mustard and royal blue! See here or here

And MAZE was featured in this months Elle Decoration UK…

Thank you for following my work, see you in 2013!

Happy Christmas / God Jul!

MAZE for sale

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 11:42:48 -0400

I have a limited number of MAZE furoshikis for sale, which I am selling in a special box set with 2 risograph prints. Have a look here

Maze Furoshiki

Designed for The Link Collective

Traditional Japanese multi functional
wrapping cloth

90 x 90 cm
100% Cotton Satin

Hand printed in Japan
(see process interview here)

Comes specially boxed with 2 risograph prints.

MAZE FUROSHIKI

+

EMPTY ZOO RISOGRAPH PRINT
Signed edition of 100
21 cm x 15 cm

+

LION RISOGRAPH MINI PRINT
15 cm x 9 cm

=
£50

The Drawing Room at LDW

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 06:00:56 -0400

Gouache painting in celebration of the airmail letter, for the exhibition The Drawing Room as part of The London Design festival.

Maze weaving

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:32:00 -0400

A weaving I made earlier in the summer, a translation of my maze furoshiki design.

7cm x 65 cm

Furoshiki design for Link collective

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 08:19:00 -0400

Today is the launch of furoshiki makers Link’s new design collaborations with myself and Lucinda Newton Dunn.

My design Maze, is about the journey out of a city, specifically London. It is an observation of the city’s varying pace, spacing and architecture, and the need to escape beyond the city’s boundaries to nature every once in a while.

After creating the design, I discovered that the spiral motif in traditional japanese art signifies luck, which feels serendipitous. I like the idea of carrying things around wrapped in ideas of adventure and optimism for the future.

The furoshikis have been printed in Japan using traditional hand made methods, Link visited the Chiffonez printing factory and interviewed the owner Mr Fakuda. Look here for the insightful article about the process. It’s wonderful to see such craftsmanship being applied with one of my designs, many thanks to Kyoko at Link for getting me involved in this project.

If you don’t know what a furoshiki is yet, then head over to Link’s page where they will tell you all the great possibilities of them.Click here!

‘Maze’ is printed in a bright coral/ cinnabar and overlaid with process blue/cyan which appears navy with the layering.

90cm x 90cm 100% Cotton satin. 10% of all furoshiki sales will be going towards recovery efforts in Tohoku, specifically towards rebuilding a sewing factory where furoshikis are made. Buy here

All photographs here courtesy of Link and Martin Holtkamp

I am travelling around Japan July 11th-26th. If anyone has any recommendations of things to see and do (esp textiles related), let me know! Visiting Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Takayama and Naoshima. hello(at)hannahwaldron.co.uk. Thank you

Visual Editions commission

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:09:00 -0400

I was asked by exciting publishers Visual Editions to create an image for their May newsletter. For each newsletter a different artist/ studio integrate the dingbat type of the Visual Editions logo within the image in some way. See the newsletter here. Many thanks to Visual Editions for inviting me to take part in such an interesting brief.

Detail.

Layout.

Scans.

Pick me up wall hanging

Wed, 02 May 2012 08:21:00 -0400

A little more about my recent weaving commission, KURUKURU, a result of the brief by Landfill Editions to create a work ‘that referenced in some way Eduardo Paolozzi’s visual maximalism, disorienting juxtapositions and oblique political commentary.’

From ‘Eduardo Paolozzi’ by Diane Kirkpatrick, Studio Vista 1970

‘Perhaps the central unifying concept which has underlaid his work from his student days to the present is the desire to express the quality of mystery, of magic, which he finds present in the ordinary objects and events of the world- what he has called ‘the sublime of everyday life.’

‘More recently this has been joined by the desire to express something of the schizophrenic quality’ of present western urban life.

…he was attracted to work that was intricate and ‘busy’ like the drawings of Durer, Rembrandt, Piero di Cosimo’s paintings, Byzantine and Gothic ivories, and the surfaces of oriental bronzes. In such works he found ‘other ways of handling my own obsession with detail… For me as for Piero di Cosimo, detail is…a world within a world, and then another world within this last world, like a series of boxes in which each box once opened, reveals in turn another box, and then again another box’ (roditi, Dialogues in art).’

What I took from my research of Paolozzi’s process of working that I could in some way relate to my own way of working was his fascination of details, of worlds within worlds and what I admire greatly is his collaging of seemingly disparate elements that by the unifying power of his Self create new worlds unique to him, yet relate so much to us understanding the world as a whole.

‘LOTS OF PICTURES, LOTS OF FUN’ Paolozzi Screen print 1971.

It seemed natural to me to relate to the site of Pick Me Up (Somerset house embankment gallery) firstly because I have a history with the space. Having worked as a gallery assistant following my graduation from Brighton University and return to my hometown I clocked up many hours pacing the floorboards of the embankment galleries, and all the thoughts that follow have become a part of the interior of the space for me. Secondly I find a fascination in the nature of a graphic arts fair, the complexity of so many peoples work, individual ideas and narratives and collectives visions all swirling about each other is very much a collage in itself if we were to assume a birds eye view.

Scan from ‘Japanese family crests’ published by Seigensha

So I was aiming to create a piece that reflected on this nature of Pick Me Up, resulting in a floor plan of sorts of the show, within each section are references of colliding worlds, pick me up exhibitors… somerset house…paolozzi… and my own world.

I am beginning to think about the display of these hangings. It is the process and materials that is exciting about weaving, which is what I want people to understand. I wonder in order to do so it is necessary for people to be able to view them 360 degrees- to treat them as 3d works… to see the reverse, the selvedges and to leave the yarn free at the bottom in order to see the yarns travelling across the structure.

KURUKURU, sideview

From a child’s perspective, Paolozzi’s elephant.

Reverse.

Venice furoshiki

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:40:00 -0400

The second in a series of 3 planned furoshikis, 80 venice furoshikis were hand printed and stitched in time to present at Pick Me Up in the Landfill editions ‘LOTS OF PICTURES, LOTS OF FUN’ exhibition.

A furoshiki is a versatile multifunctional Japanese wrapping cloth, uses can be to wrap presents, to keep something separate within your bag- ie a book or item of clothing, to wrap a packed lunch in, to present a bottle of wine to someone, as a handkerchief, a small bag, to wrap a loaf of bread in, or keep flat and frame.

In august I spent a week at the venice biennale in the hot bright heat, navigating the exhibitions amidst the labyrinthine streets.

4 colour screenprinted onto 100% cotton, size 45 cm x 45 cm

Edition of 80

£10

Also available to buy here.

Visualising literature

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:27:00 -0400

The final outcome.

Detail.

Clay ziggurat and arena forms.

I was invited by Billie Muraben of Camberwell press to take part in their project ‘Visualising Literature’ as part of the programme Into the fold.

The aim of the project was to highlight the value of visual intelligence in communication. The brief was to choose a page from a piece of fiction and illustrate a passage/sentence/word/mood and set the type on a double a4 spread.

I had just recently finished reading Momus’s Book of Japans, which I thought was an excellent text to use for this project as Momus has an amazing skill of exploring incredible and often wonderfully bizarre ideas in short spaces of writing.

passage from page 83/84

-From the way the idiot Dionysus Ralph tells it, you would think his

voyage a ride to Hesperia in the plush velvet carriages of some starry

railroad, rather than a visit to Japan in a cow. Strange astrological

motifs were visible in a field of stars, he says. From high in the sky

tiny villas with terracotta tiles could be seen, and ancient arenas, and

poplar trees. A plume of steam streaked behind, and the music of the

spheres chimed with the bell voices of a Kurzweil K250.

At last Japan came into view, and then Tokyo, that enormous Labyrinth, its

ziggurat apartment blocks stirring in the blue dawn as it stretched and

rewound the thin, taut thread of quotidian consciousness. -

An interesting part of this project was the workshop that ran as part of it. At Camberwell space, still life compositions were set up with objects that represented parts of each text, and we were invited to come in and draw from these compositions to see how drawing from life affects the final outcomes.

I thought this was a really interesting take on visualising the fictions, to take flat words and begin to sculpt forms from them. From the piece of fiction I chose I made some ziggurat structures of clay to contribute to the proceedings. It is always good to be outside of your comfort zone, and I enjoyed making quick drawings for a change, time constraints meant I chose colours instinctively which ended up informing the end result.

Many thanks to Billie and everyone at Camberwell Press for inviting me to be involved, I look forward to seeing everyone’s final outcomes which will form a publication, more news of that soon.

KURUKURU (round and round)

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:05:00 -0400

KURUKURU
36 cm x 60 cm

The Landfill ‘LOTS OF PICTURES, LOTS OF FUN’ wall at Pick me up, on until April 1st.

Venice Furoshikis

Last wednesday saw the opening of Pick Me Up 2012, the mammoth graphic art fair at Somerset House. I was invited by Landfill editions to take part in ‘LOTS OF PICTURES, LOTS OF FUN’- a new collection of works by contemporary artists inspired by the visionary legacy of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) and named after his 1972 silkscreen print of the same title.

I was asked to create a work that referenced in some way Paolozzi’s visual maximalism and energy, disorienting juxtapositions and oblique political commentary. Over the past month I have been working on a weaving for the space, resulting in a tapestry collage that draws upon my research of Paolozzi’s practise, the site of somerset house/PMU and various other elements of my current interests and fascinations. I also presented a new furoshiki at the show, ‘Venice’.

More about this project soon, ‘LOTS OF PICTURES, LOTS OF FUN’ at Pick Me Up is on until 1 April at Somerset House, info here.

Flag 1 wall hanging

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 05:51:00 -0400

Flag 1

43 x 87 cm

4 shaft loom hand weaving

Wall hanging exploring structure and form within the 4 shaft loom hand weaving process, with an emphasis on combining weft faced weaving and balanced weave. Compositional elements are taken from studies of the language of flags.

New wall hangings

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 05:32:00 -0400

Before the digital age, memories, histories, significant events and vital information for preservation were individually recorded by processes that were all-consuming, the outcome of which was a unique artefact. Hand drawn maps charting our landscapes, tapestries recording historical events, and quilts intricately embroidered with family histories all involved vast levels of observation, time and thought that has no parallel in the way our society documents life today.

If we need to know where we are going we perhaps look at a google map, similarly if we want to document an event we take a photo, which will probably be digital, and existing as a file on a computer. This instantaneous process allows us to repeat the process easily so that we are able to record endless images, which often end up being cursory, bringing into question the value we place on these images, and whether they hinder our actual experience and observation of what is it we are documenting.

The process of learning hand weaving has served to heighten my awareness of this division in how our ancestors and how we, now, record events. For the past 9 months I have been creating a series of weavings representing my experience of various cities I visited that year. Each weaving collages together the disconnected fragments of my activity and narrative within the city to create a personal map capturing a period in time in my personal history. The process of traditionally weaving an image must be the most extreme opposite to taking a digital photo, and through the thought, time and planning it has taken these weavings to get from experience to final object therein lies, for me, the excitement and value. I hope that these works will engage the viewer on focusing on the importance of journey from event to object and challenge people’s ideas of the value of images through the process of weaving.

Also through these weavings I have worked again with colour theories brought to my attention through the writings of Josef Albers and Johannes Ittens, as it makes sense to me to have begun my studies in weaving, grounded in understanding the principles already explored in the historical context of textiles and art history in general. The importance for me, next, is to explore weaving in the light of this moment in time.

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:52:46 -0400

After a couple of months of having my head down absorbed in projects, it is good to be finally...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:51:00 -0500

After a couple of months of having my head down absorbed in projects, it is good to be finally nearing the completion of my first series of weavings and begin to show these experiments.

Leading on from the last weaving I showed here, I have made 3 more pieces continuing my investigations into markmaking, colour and surface matiere within the process of weaving and tapestry. I will go into more detail soon but some sections from the new works are shown below.

Alongside this, I have worked on an exciting extensive project with Magma books on a product that I look forward to talking more about this autumn when it will be released.

I have also enjoyed making packaging artwork for the delicious Origin coffee with A-side studio and secondly creating an image for the book cover screen printing workshop at the V&A friday late ‘No Strings’.

In other news my wrapping paper and greetings card for Toasted Wrap/ Urban Graphic has been reprinted in another edition of 1000.