Tomorrow I shall be presenting a keynote paper at a symposium about Motifs at Nottingham Trent University. I’m looking forward to lots of discussions and sharing my own practice-based research including projects with David Mellor Design and Barbican.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea of looking and seeing, and particularly how we evidence what we have seen. I have boxes of photographic prints of things I’ve seen: cracks in pavements, postboxes around the country, vapour trails in the sky, flowers I’ve grown and plants I wish I’d grown – and much more. When the world turned digital I stopped filling real boxes and filled virtual boxes, and some I look back at, but rarely do I touch the surface of the sights I have collected.
The engagement in social media, and the sharing of pictures begs me to think again about why we take pictures, and why we share them. As I spend most of my time in some sort of real or virtual context of people in the creative industries my Twitter and Instagram feeds are heavily laden with considerately photographed shadows of railings, colour combinations of socks on patterned tiles, recently obtained vintage finds, and dare I say it, beautiful breakfasts! Not only are we collecting imagery, we are proving that we are seeing and experiencing interesting / beautiful / different things and places, judged by us and hopefully ‘liked’ by others. Yes it’s marketing; a branding tool to evidence our aesthetic judgements.
Some questions then, are we seeing more? Do we notice more, and appreciate more?
It does seem as if there have always been people who see faces in clouds, and beauty in peeling paint, but I wonder if social media is driving us to become a load of aesthetes. In my world it may seem that way.
As a pattern maker I’m always on the lookout for eye-candy, and usually of the ‘just happened to be there’ kind of pattern, rather than a designed pattern – having said that, I’m equally likely to be stopped in my tracks by a well-designed wallpaper. There have been many books over the years, and more recently blogs that feature the beauty in the overlooked, or the ugly, or the mundane. The desire to collate / curate these sights are no more in evidence than in the world of Patternity a design-savyy duo with a manifesto about pattern! Their stunning website and book and interesting collaborations are clearly tapping in to this moment of ‘seeing’. Check them out if you are so far unaware.
Pattern really is everywhere, formally and informally and that’s the pleasure. I remember the day I was taught the mysteries of repeat pattern making, and that evening in a pub in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, I took great pride in identifying the repeat ’tiles’ in the carpet, wallpaper and curtains of the glorious / hideous 1990s pub decor.
I had the pleasure to spend time with the fabulous Sarah Campbell last month, and much of our conversation, as we were at New Designers, was about pattern making; why we do it, how we do it, and getting people to pay for us to do it. During the conversation Sarah spotted a lady beside us in a polka dot blouse, and we noted that pattern-makers never really switch off from pattern spotting (pun intended!), pattern making, and pattern appreciating. When we departed we both commented that we look forward to reading each others next blog post – well here you are, this one is for you Sarah – it was a pleasure to see pattern with you!
I’ve been out in the ‘real world’ so to speak for nearly twenty years, and while I found that such a scary idea during my time at art college, having little idea of what I really wanted to do, now I realise it’s okay. I look back and remember so many exciting things that I’ve been up to and so many great people I’ve worked with that I am grateful for living the portfolio career in art and design.
I made the choice to lead an academic career alongside my own practice and both really support each other. I am sharing and honest in my own learning experiences from industry working across art and design contexts. The students’ creative journeys also inspire the creative investigation in me. We talk of ‘branding’ and ‘professional identities’ in the Second year that I am currently leading in the Textile Design degree course at Birmingham City University, and consider how we and others see us and what we can control and what others interpret. I’m not a corporation or multinational company and yet the word ‘brand’ is commonly used for the self-employed too. Language used in promotional material as well as social media build a story, whether we like the tale or not. Does my design integrity come across? what about my inspiration? is the market level clear?…
I’ve been redesigning my website over the last few months. This is always an opportunity to ask myself more questions, and to reflect on where I’ve come from, where I’ve been and where I plan to go within the world of design, and specifically pattern. I’ve been excited by the process. I’ve chosen headings / page titles that more accurately reflect my current practice and edited substantial information relating to projects of years gone by. I’ve made it more image-based and updated text, again to reflect the shift in my design practice interests. With social media being a really key part of building a ‘brand’ these days this process has been happening as I go, but I’ve finally embraced instagram, having enjoyed Twitter over the last three years.
So, for all the bookbinding workshops I’ve led, the public consultation exercises I’ve participated in, the colours and materials I’ve sourced, the flowers I’ve drawn and the prints that I’ve pulled, this is where I’m at now…
Kate Farley - drawn to design 