Four artists – Helen Sullivan, Jacky Puzey, Emma McCusker and Schram&Sandhu – partnered with local residents to explore, design and develop a series of small-batch digitally fabricated objects, inspired by the rich tattoo culture and people of Knowle West. These stories and materials have been cataloged by our mobile tattoo parlour in the I Will Always Have You project.
A series of products have been produced that will form part of an exhibition in September 2015. During the manufacturing process, makers used digital manufacturing processes such as 3D printers, CNC machines and laser cutters in a mini-digital manufacturing hub run by KWMC and through access to the FabLab at the University of the West of England (UWE).
Objects of Desire was developed with support from the Crafts Council.
Lipstick cushion by Helen Sullivan; green spiked bag by Emma McCusker. Product photography by Lee Magpie Photography.
As a mixed-media textile designer Emma’s interests lie in the response of people to tactile and visually engaging surface, which has led her to create works that aim to generate an inquisitive response through their playful and often strange qualities. Experimentation is key to her practice and designing through invention has led her to explore and exploit material possibilities using a range of surface manipulation and construction techniques. She is a designer, who thinks like an engineer, thriving on the need to problem solve and create work with optimal sense. With a keen interest and belief in the importance of craft, as a designer she looks at fresh ways of using new technologies such as laser cutting and CAD embroidery that demonstrations practical thinking, skill and creative innovation within the use of these tools. Often combining these processes with more hand rendering and of like casting and moulding, which she explores from a textiles outlook.
Jacky Puzey specializes in digital embroidery commissions for fashion, tailoring and interiors.
Jacky has developed a highly skilled and artisan approach to her use of digital multi-thread embroidery machines, enabling her to incorporate a rich palette of colour, unique material combinations and found treasures into her work. This enables Jacky to provide a unique and bespoke collaborative design experience to all of her clients. Each commission interweaves the client’s own narratives, and Jacky’s creative skill and vision, to create elaborate embroideries, onto richly textured interior accessories or beautifully made bespoke suits.
Jacky originally trained as a fine artist, working in installation, photography and later costume and pattern-cutting for her MA. As part of her PhD in Fashion, Textiles and Visual Culture at Bath Spa University, she then developed significant skills in digital embroidery and tailoring. She has been working as an embroiderer, tailor and artist since 2007. Her work is inspired by her experiences of living in diverse cultures and communities, from Panama to Kenya to inner city Easton, Bristol. She is fascinated by textile and fashion histories, and the dynamic layering of images, identities, and textures of cloth and culture.
As a duo Laurie Schram and Inderjeet Sandhu together focus mainly on the creation of fictional and semi-fictional companies. Artistic communication through branding and utopic/ dystopic company visions. SCHRAM&SANDHU is concept driven and embraces both fine art and design in its practice with an emphasis on absurdity and the escalation of error.
Helen began to work with inner tubes, examining their capabilities and constraints as the principal textile used to create unique, sustainable accessories during an internship at KB Designs. She was keen to use the material, alongside the skills and knowledge that I had acquired, to see how this could be translated into a womenswear collection.
Using recycled inner tubes as the principal focus of her graduate collection, she took a material with an ostensibly rigid and limiting nature and broke it down in order to create fluid silhouettes. The collection, named ‘Tomorrow’, took inspiration from tribal influences with an underpinning theme of a dystopian world that needs improving.
She is now in the process of launching a unisex childrenswear brand; Hoopla Swag. They focus on creating clothing that encourages children to express different roles and identities whilst still maintaining comfort and practicality. They create textiles which challenge preconceptions of how print and colour are predominantly featured in boyswear and girlswear on the high-street.
