As we launch the BATD Blog Alumni series, which we are going to make a regular feature, we would like to thank Willow Sharp who graduated from the BA Textile Design degree in 2010 for being our inaugural guest posting.
Textile Design is a multi-faceted discipline and our graduates are equipped with a broad range of skills that allow them to enter a variety of design disciplines – not just Textile Design.
Willow’s experiences are a testament to this:
What is your current role?
Unexpectedly, as an assistant graphic designer for a New Zealand
company called David Trubridge. I say unexpectedly as it never occurred to me
at uni that this was an area I'd like to develop - I'm a naturally messy worker
whose tendency to mix and match and experiment with materials would result in
very process-driven work. However, saying never came to bite my bum and here I
am, loving the fastidiousness of this whole new world.
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| "I Dare You" - Willow Sharp |
What does a
typical working day involve?
No day is the same. Our desk is a constantly evolving pile of books,
notes and sketchbooks that help us through the day's tasks: anything from
website work, marketing, copywriting, advertising, packaging and labeling,
writing and illustrating instructions...the majority of the company's products
are kitset, so getting these comprehensible across a broad range of languages
is a big priority. We are lucky to have such an endlessly growing list of
must-dos as it means we are constantly trying to improve on the last achievement.
Needless to say, all of this is helped along by quite a few cups of tea (and
coffee).
What are the
rewards of your job/work?
Being an apprentice to such a fantastic side-kick, Ben Pearce, and
learning all the ropes of how a big company works. It is hugely satisfying to
tackle something you'd never seen yourself doing and having the light bulb
switched on that typography is actually quite wonderful. Some days it still
feels like foreign territory. I have so much to learn and it's exciting to think
that I am finally developing the skill set that I'd sacrifice for
experimentation at uni. (Rolling of eyes is acceptable here by in-the-know
teachers.)
The construction and manufacture side of the business is something I
still find fairly mind-blowing. My much
more 2D background dictates a certain awe for anything that has a battery
(within limits), so walking through the workshop every day where CNC machines,
belt sanders and tools I don't even know the name of are being used by skilled
craftsmen is something that tends to stop me in my tracks. Being a cog in a
machine which is all in-house is really interesting; how a company works across
all those areas of design, manufacture, sale and shipping is right there at
your disposal, a ripe opportunity to learn.
Oh. And one more witter. It would be tardy not to mention people if
we're talking about "rewards". Developing relationships with media,
specifying companies and collaborators, of course all the people who you work
with, is a considerable bonus. People are everything.
Tell me a little
bit about your background – how did you come to textiles and where has it led
you?
I bumble-stumbled through a pretty varied spectrum of experiences in
my early twenties. Mainly based in the UK, one thing lead to the next and
textile design emerged as an obvious choice. It combined my love for colour and
pattern that had chased me since childhood and felt like a more constructive
challenge than fine art. A stint at St Martins doing a short course in the
discipline and learning that inks + bleach could lead to hours of fun cemented
the decision. So that was that, and I found myself confronting a rather
terrifying Patrick at an interview for RMIT's BA.
Even though I'm now working in graphic design, I still consider myself
a textile designer. It's my natural stamping ground where things make sense.
When we first arrived in New Zealand three years ago, I did a lot of work
through schools teaching wee kids art and craft. Textiles were always an
emphasis. I was shocked by these kids who didn't know what a slip knot was, or
couldn't wind balls of wool, and who'd never had the miraculous experience that
is paper mache. At the moment my own practice is limited to endless experiments
with paints and paper and inks, very drawing and mark-making based-bits that
are just gathering in a pile. Optimistically, I'm convinced they'll find a
purpose.
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| "Colour Story - Small Thoughts"- Willow Sharp |
What do you find
most exciting about the industry today?
I think the urgency to return to a much more crafts-driven industry -
or many smaller industries - is really interesting. How proud our forbears
would be to see how cool knitting and the "artisan" approach towards
hand skills have become. I also think they'd be pretty chuffed, but also a bit
bemused by the utter essentialness of
it all - and the aspiration behind it.
Our sense that we need to strip back design and our lives to
simplicity, simplicity, simplicity is armed with the double edged sword of all
this new knowledge: materials,
technology and its manipulation, and an understanding of the sticky environmental
and ethical issues that have traditionally clung to the textile industry like a
bad smell. Educating consumers in the provenance of goods is an enormous
concept but it's potential to impact where we spend within the industry is
exciting. Expanding this resurgence of appreciation for the small, for the
home-made, for the locally created is a challenge that somehow fascinates me;
it could be argued that we're privileged to even have that choice. So, how do
we educate to change that?
Weirdly, I think it starts, in many ways, with hand skills. With
sharing them around in the community. If you learn how to knit, or to patch a
pair of jeans, or to make your own carry bag (complete with potato prints), it
gets you thinking about what else you can do. Sometimes, anyway. And while it's
not going to solve the world's consumer complex, it might engender the
emergence of questioning. Which leads to answers, or misgivings. Which leads to
new choices. Which might just lead, potentially, to a new real love of crafts.
Sending-it-back-into-the-hands-of-the-people might have an uncomfortably
socialist tinge to it but it does seem like that's one of the strengths of the
industry at the moment; encouraging people from all manners of backgrounds to
jump on the beady bandwagon and have a go. Change the world through people
learning to make things? Well, it's an industry which (along with food) has the
potential to do just that...
Are there
particular artists or designers you admire? What is it about them that you
admire?
I have huge faith in design crushes. Jost Huchuli is one of my current
ones - a Swiss typographer and graphic designer who writes with all the down to
earth passion of a potato farmer, hugely knowledgeable and inspirational but
somehow never getting didactic. Georg Lois is another one - and he is a bit
didactic - but he's great, flamboyant, one of those brilliantly witty
advertising guys who makes advertising seem like a noble thing. Joanna Fowles
is a beautiful textile designer whose work makes me weak with love. Kate
Banzai. Leah Fraser's mesmerizing, poignant paintings, Marimekko, for their
gloriously robust sense of colour and pattern. Kvadrat for their balancing act
of textiles in the fine art world. Ptolemy Mann for her tidy take-over of all
things colour and chromatic related: architecture, product, and above all,
weaving. I think that's probably enough for now...
Oh. And anyone of those enormously annoying but fantastically
energetic people who manage to run their own endeavours and businesses and creative
partnerships...and have a full time job...as well as keeping husbands and
children happy! I won't name names. But, how I admire you!
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| "Colour Story 1"- Willow Sharp |
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| "Colour Story 2"- Willow Sharp |
What are you
looking forward to?
Putting all the skills I am learning in this job towards my own
business!! (And whipping my partner's into marketable shape.)
To learn more about Willow go to her link http://willowsharp.com/
To learn more about Willow go to her link http://willowsharp.com/
