Wild Textiles By Alice Fox

Description

In her book Wild Textiles, artist Alice Fox shows how to work with found, foraged, gathered and grown materials. She creates fabulous textile pieces that are inspired by, and made from, nature. She encourages crafters to be open minded and experimental. Alice uses local (and sometimes) unconventional materials. Additionally, she works with the seasons. Alice learns what materials are available at different times of year. This grounds artists in natural cycles. Additionally, it integrates creative activity with a strong sense of place and character.

Alongside advice on growing your own plants (such as flax or nettles) for creative work, the book is packed with practical ideas for foraging – from weeds, dandelions and other plants useful for making cordage, or leaves that can be stitched, quilted and shaped into vessels, to grass, wool, plastics and mud that can be gathered and delightfully repurposed by the textile artist. Other ideas for found materials include stones, shells and wood that can be wrapped or woven into, as well as a multitude of urban treasures that find a new life in creative hands.

Did you see Alice on FEEDBACK FRIDAY? Go here to watch the recording.

About Alice:

Sustainability is at the heart of Alice’s practice. The desire to take an ethical approach has driven a shift from using conventional art and textile materials into exploring found objects, gathered materials and natural processes. The work that Alice makes is process led. She gathers the materials that are available to her, testing, sampling and exploring them to find possibilities using her textiles-based skill set and techniques borrowed from soft basketry. Alice makes sculptural works. Additionally, she brings different materials together to form tactile surfaces and structures.

Establishing her allotment garden as a source of materials for her work has provided a space where Alice can experiment, exploring the potential of what grows there, planted and wild, as well as other materials found on the plot. Materials are produced, gathered and processed seasonally and are hard-won: There may only be a small batch of each type of usable material each year. As a result, each bundle of dandelion stems, bramble fibre or hand processed flax is enormously precious by its scarcity and the meaning attached to it through its sourcing and hand-processing.

Following a first career in nature conservation, Alice studied Contemporary Surface Design and Textiles at Bradford School of Art (2011), followed by an MA in Creative Practice at Leeds Arts University (2019). She has had work acquired by Newcastle City Library, the International Quilt Museum, Lincoln Nebraska and the Ahmanson Collection, USA. Alice was commissioned by the clothing company TOAST and Kettles Yard, Cambridge for their Re-New project in 2019. She is published by Batsford (2015 and 2022) and has a number of self-published titles including Natural Processes in Textile Art: From Rust Dyeing to Found Objects.