There has been a hiatus here, I admit. I had gotten dissatisfied with my approach to writing on this blog -- which I view as my design blog -- vs. my art blog, http://laurafosternicholson.com, which has een devoted to the more personal -- less commercial? -- activity of making artwork and musing about it.
I lecture to art schools and conferences about the relationship between art, craft & design in my work, yet I have separated these into two blogs and an etsy site. Now I am re-thinking the role of design in my creative life -- as I am doing so much of it! I often thought it was the fun, rather thoughtless side of my work -- decorative, patterned, fun, carefree. Certainly my commercial clients need it to be that way, but I have been considering design as a more tightly conceptual aspect of my artwork lately. Spoonflower still intrigues me, in that it makes very accessible relatively inexpensive prints of my ideas on fabrics with which I might make items that could be thoughtful as well as decorative.
Recently I decided to start to try to express some of my more basic ideas about ecologically responsible living in useful textiles; I have been experimenting with silkscreening on towels and handkerchiefs and trying to use imagery which is inspired and fairly clear in its meaning. Such as, "Here is a cloth napkin as an alternative to something you might throw away. And it is nice, so you will want to have it!" I hope to create a series this spring of household textiles, when I decide how I want to portray my messages.
I designed 3 different towels so far for Spoonflower: one speaks of the importance of trees and the other two about the delight of eating fresh, local produce.
They are available now for sale through Spoonflower -- you will have to hem them yourself: one yard of 54" fabric yields 4 towels -- or soon, on my etsy site.
You see, already I am writing more about ideas and less about "product"!
all images and designs copyright Laura Foster Nicholson, 2011.
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