This personally set brief allowed me to explore an area I really care about: the relationship between textiles and women in the past, present and future in a magazine format, whilst also giving myself a chance to design and write a magazine. Designed as a coffee table magazine but influenced by the writing styles of 90's Riot Grrrl feminist zines, it fills in the gap in the market of craft magazines that tells the stories of the history of textiles.
"The beautiful, textural, higgledy-piggledy quilts created by the women of the rural Alabama town of Gee’s Bend are, without a doubt, art. Composed with consideration and not made following any predetermined pattern, the 100-year-old tradition of this community of women has been displayed in art galleries across America and to much critical acclaim. But these quilts were crafted out of necessity, made to keep families warm and safe in cold winters. The community of women behind their creation never had any intention of making art. So what elevated the work from craft to an art form?"
But in the way all artists are, she’s always looking. Often working from memory, she takes what she saw out on the water back to her studio and attempts to capture what she remembers in paper, watercolor or collage. She explains, “It wont ever be a picture of the sea but it’ll be my own version of how I saw it. I’m not really trying to make pictures about the sea, I’m trying to make things about what I feel about the sea.”
My introduction to the world of textile making may have been rocky, but it’s a story that a lot of people used to be able to identify with. The teaching of any kind of textiles skills, woman to woman and generation after generation is a great and undervalued part of the history of textiles.