Artist’s Statement
Rain Forest Walk
This fibre art installation was inspired by my love and adoration for the changes which occur in Nature in Autumn.
Being absorbed by the colours - burgundy, rust, gold - and constantly talking about it, especially in the month of October, I realised one day that some people are not aware and don’t see what is going on around them.
I began to collect leaves and do things with them that I hadn’t done since I was a child, such as rubbings, pressing, etc. Soon the work began to grow. I began to dye my materials - baling twine, sisal, rope - to achieve the depth of colour required, and I began to use traditional techniques such as knitting to create "trees", and weaving for wall hangings, wrapping techniques for roots.
The "Walk" is inspired by a walk in Moate Park, Co. Roscommon, the rustling of leaves as I crunch them underfoot. I hope the work stimulates all the senses.
MATERIAL CONCERNS
Roscommon-based artist Frances Crowe is an artist in the medium of fibre art, using traditional and less conventional materials as her palette. Recent artistic developments have resulted in her latest work, the installation Rain Forest Walk, which is on show this month at the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar. Ian Wieczorek spoke to Frances Crowe in the run-up to the exhibition.
IAN WIECZOREK: Can you tell me about Rain Forest Walk?
FRANCES CROWE: Rain Forest Walk is an exhibition based on some ideas I began to develop over the last few months, particularly around October and November when I was absolutely enthralled by the colours last autumn. I’m enthralled by the autumn colours every year, but I began to dye my materials to reflect the colours that were around me at that time, the rusts and browns. I also began to gather leaves and dry them and use them in my work. When I was thinking about exhibiting in Linenhall the idea of this Rain Forest Walk came to me while walking in Moate Park, a forest park near where I live - to create an environment using the leaves, knitted or woven trees, and other materials such as plastics and video tape to create rain. That's the piece, and hopefully it'll all come together. It's very much based on the environment and very organic. It's a multi-sensory thing really, because apart from the visual side there is also an element of smell from the twine that I use, and the smell from the dried leaves that I'm using. There is a sound of rainfall that I have on tape, and when people will walk through this you'll get a sound underfoot from the leaves. All of that will come together within the exhibition. It's about walking in a forest when it's raining, rather than any connotations with the rainforest. It's much more local than that, it’s about Roscommon and Mayo.
When did you start working in fibre?
It was a definite course of development. When I was studying at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin I was in the Painting School. I began using the paint very thickly and applying materials like sand and fabric - the work was kind of growing off the canvas, and I began adding wool and rope and materials like that. Then I did a teaching practice year and one of the crafts I decided to take up was weaving, because I had been fascinated with the Weaving Department all through my years in Fine Art. So I learned basic things about weaving, but I never applied the experience it in the conventional way on the loom, my weaving was always much bigger and more textured. That was really how I crossed over from paint. I felt I was able to get from the wools all I wanted to achieve in paint and much more besides.
As you have already mentioned, you are using many more materials now than just the wool. Your work has become a very contrasting, textural, sensual thing.
I have always used fleece and hand-spun wool which I would have dyed myself, and I would also have used rope and twine. I crossed over a little bit a year or so ago into plastics, because I was doing a lot of recycling projects, and I was using shredded newspaper and audio and video tape and refuse sacks a lot in my work. I'm trying to use both sets of materials together in this show, and I hope they will complement each other: the plastic is so cold and hard compared to the softness of the wool, the materials are so completely different. It should result in some interesting contrasts.
How does Rain Forest Walk relate to other work that you have done?
I have been working at my art for 20 years, but it is really only in the last two years that I have let it go out in solo exhibitions. I have been involved in a lot of group work and group exchanges and group shows, but I always felt that my work needed a space of its own: it didn't fit comfortably with painting and sculpture and it needed to stand on its own, I think. And my work has changed recently again, because I am now more interested in creating an entire space rather than making individual pieces within a show. Now I rather just look at a space and see how I can make something that will work in that space.
You're talking about creating a total environment, rather than pieces that exist within an environment.
That's right. So each element of this new show interrelates, and it has all been made since January specifically with this show in mind.
In terms of your intentions generally, how do you want your work to meet the public?
I am fascinated and really pleased by the effect that the work has on people. There is no big deep hidden meaning - I have no big problems in my life or in my past that I have to work out in my art. It's all just very simply about the materials, nature, colours, textures. I might make lines using those materials rather than a pencil, for instance. I just love when people walk into a space and it overwhelms them. That's really my intention.
So your work is really a celebration of the different materials and how they are brought together.
I think so, yes. And this style of work, I don't know whether there is much of it out there, but everyone tells me they have never seen work like it before, and so I want to bring it around and show people what I'm doing. I was taught traditional weaving techniques by a teacher who was taught in the Dovecote Studios in Scotland. But now I'm changing things around a lot, I'm doing things in my own way, and I'm wrapping and stretching and knitting and crocheting - I'm using a lot of traditional female crafts but in Fine Art way.
Fibre art as a medium (rather than traditional weaving) is something that has only really happened in the last 30 or 40 years.
Well, it's been around a while, but it's only more recently that it's really been accepted as an art form.
Do you see that as part of the whole art/craft divide?
Yes, and has always been a huge problem for me, and a big hang-up, almost. I don't want to be termed a craft worker, no offence meant to anyone working in that field. People who see my work say to me "oh, I'd love a bag like that", or "I’d love a jacket made out of that", but I'd never be thinking in those terms - if I did I would be a clothes designer. But whenever I’m thinking about my work or using my materials, I'm thinking on a very different level altogether, I'm thinking in terms of how to create pieces of art. But certainly there are still boundaries to be broken down in terms of perception.
Those "poorer" materials would nowadays have a more established place as valid fine art materials; a lot of artists are now using less classically accepted, more unconventional materials.
It’s a voyage of discovery, of discovering new possibilities. That's what I love about this new material I have started using recently, which is sisal baling twine. It’s absolutely amazing because it soaks up the dye and I can do all sorts of things with it, and it is a cheap material to use - but, yes, my materials are poor man's materials, all right.
How do you see the recent development of your work?
The first solo show I had was in Garter Lane in Waterford last July, and looking back I realise I had far too many different styles in the show, there wasn’t any real sense of cohesion. Working alone - for solo exhibitions - is still a learning curve for me, but what is happening is that my work is getting simpler: I am exploring one aspect in greater depth, rather than presenting a number of different aspects. I am refining the elements of process and keeping the work coherent. The more you work, the more that seems to happen and the purer it becomes. In addition, in the past my work would have been more pictorial or representational, but now I find I'm honing in on the smallest area or aspect and enlarging that into piece in its own right. Now the work is more to do with composition, colour and texture. I’m only just beginning to explore the world of installation art and I’m still finding my feet making creating it, but I certainly do want this idea of the viewer standing within the work and moving within and around and through it. Something just hanging on a wall is no good to me any more. Last year I began to use perspex in an attempt to let the viewer look at the work from different angles, and this new work is a further development of that, a logical next step.
Are there any artists you would see as influences?
I’m never aware or conscious of where my influences are coming from. In terms of the area of work I’m in now, I’m sure there are other people doing what I’m doing, but I certainly don’t know them. I haven’t really even seen many exhibitions of the sort of thing I’m doing. I’m sure they are out there somewhere, though - they have to be!
So in terms of your future work, do you see it very much developing in the same direction of "environment creation".
I think so, yes. I don’t know what is going to be next for me. All I know is that I have really enjoyed the work I have done this year and I hope to continue to develop it.
[Interview from Arts West magazine issue 78]
|
