Kathy Schicker

WOVEN LIGHT

Kathy Schicker

Woven light

What is the project about? Exploring how woven textiles can produce beautiful light reactive high-end fabric for interiors and environments.

The pieces constantly respond to changes in natural light, revealing colour in sunlight and glowing in the dark - producing work that is gentle and poetic, playful and dreamlike in its engagement.

What materials and technologies have you used?

I created collections that used new and smart yarns that emit, reflect or react to light, including reflective, phosflurescent and photochromic yarns. These were woven using both traditional techniques and advanced technology – often hand woven on digital Jacquard looms. The final products are smart but wireless.

What is your vision of textile futures?

My vision of textiles futures is a tactile and beautiful one. I feel the future should involve the skill and sensitivity of textile designers working in collaboration with other disciplines such as architecture, industrial design, furniture design, medicine and science to produce innovative solutions, fabrics and fibres.

What inspires you?

Slowing down, breathing deeply, looking closely and being completely surrounded or overwhelmed – Like the beach in Uruguay, where the loudest sounds are the birds and the waves and the pace of life forces you to slow down. Or Japanese decorative arts and architecture, where the contemplation, clean lines, delicacy and skill that goes into creating their deceptively simple objects is unrivalled. Or ambient clubby spaces, where the magic of the lights and atmosphere helps take you away to another place.

What are you dreaming?

Of beauty and simplicity. Of creating a calm refuge from the over stimulating and challenging urban lifestyle. A place where you are forced to slow down, sit in comfort and savour a little magic moment. It’s a quiet place void of technology, where the environment around you is gently reacting to the natural changes in light. It’s an in-between space, an inside – outside, nothing place. A beautiful void.

Email: kathyschicker@googlemail.com

Mobile: + 44 (0) 7904197595

Web: www.textilefutures.co.uk/exchange/bin/view/TextileFutures/KathySchicker www.kathyschicker.com

Year 2 Project- Woven Light

Project Information Link - Woven Light

My aim is to create an interactive installation that would be located in a public place

The interaction would come from light creating a pattern change

The fabric would be wireless , and where possible it would rely upon natural light and human interaction to create the pattern change

The work would be located outside or on the boundaries of inside and outside

The work would be distinctly different in the day and night

The work is inspired by the concept of humanised hardware and poetic spaces

Night and Day

Biography

I am a textile designer specialising in image-based Jacquard weaving.

Following my foundation course in Cambridge I travelled, ran away with the circus, covered models in VU body paint and designed backdrops for clubs in London. Fun though that all was, a trip to India refuelled my interest in textiles and I returned to study textiles at Goldsmiths College, London.

Graduating in 2001, I went on to exhibit my woven textiles in a number of national and international exhibitions and continued to study courses and produce my work at the Centre for Contemporary Textiles in Montreal, Canada.

I also developed a career as a teacher and project manager for community arts companies, managing and delivering a number of multimedia projects for children and young people including set design, recycling and textile design.

My Artist Residency at GlaxoSmithKline in 2005 was the inspirational turning point as a new world of art, science and technology opened up for me that lead me to study the MA Design for Textile Futures.

Year 1 Projects

Project Information Link - Innovative Textiles Project

Project Information Link - Habitat Project

Commissions and Projects

This work was commissioned as part of an artist residency in Bridlington, North East Yorkshire, for Hospital Arts Fund North East Yorkshire - HAFNEY.

Hafney run a number of Arts Council funded residencies each year to provide work for local hospitals. I ran a series of textiles workshops at The Old Parcels Office in Bridlington, which informed the final commissions.

The final triptych I created was inspired by our trip to Sewerby Hall and the drawings and images that developed from it. The pieces were woven on the Power Jacquard loom at Falmouth University.

Silent at Heart

I created these pieces for the South East London Cardiac Network as part of their Silent At Heart Project.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust's the project aim was to "raise public awareness of the risk factors and symptoms associated with undetected cardiac abnormalities amongst young people. These conditions are generally referred to as Sudden Cardiac Death Syndrome (SCDS), very rare and fatal but preventable and treatable heart conditions that mainly affect healthy and active young people."

As part of the project I worked with a groups of textile students from Christ the King Sixth Form College, Lewisham, to create work in response to their personal journeys through the proejct.

www.silentatheart.org

Previous work and exhibitions

Links

• http://www.kathyschicker.com
• http://www.textiles-mtl.com
• http://www.craftscotland.org/digitalperceptionsreview.html

Contact

feel free to contact me at:

kschicker@yahoo.co.uk

copyright Kathy Schicker 2007 / 2008