Two months in the mountains
Artist Residency at 'New Hand Lab' in Covilhã, Portugal
The outcome of the residency was a piece that would stay at New Hand Lab, an enormous old wool factory. Arriving in the city, I was struck by the closeness of the mountains - towering around it on all sides, catching the changing light. Beautiful to me, dramatic and a little bit oppressive.
The space itself is rich with history: old machines, wool, equipment. I love the past being so present, it's super interesting and means you can't help but feel the weight of it in the space as you work. The city is also dotted with the remnants of the wool industry - chimneys and derelict factories everywhere.
I hadn’t used wool before in my work, so was excited to play with it’s heavy-ness and to explore the weight of it compared to materials that I usually work with, like cotton & linen. My first aim was to explore working how it responds to being worked with in the way that I use other materials. Then see what else it responds well to. Listening, testing. Staying curious.
Things that I thought would work didn’t - certain stitches or techniques looked flat or dull in the wool. Other ways of working were interesting but had big technical challenges.
I realised that it was more of a change than I’d anticipated working with a totally different material. Also, there’s a coziness about textile art created by wool, a comfortable texture that I was trying to avoid, for whatever reason, I didn’t want to re-create that look. What was really interesting to me was when the wool created a texture that was out of its usual scope. I liked the sheen created by tightly corded wool roving, and the fact that the sheen came from such a natural, soft and rough material.
The strength of the cordage and the way it shows fragility when joined reminded me of the wool industry. Richness, strength, but in a way that's disintegrating, in a state of disarray. Collapsing. Like the old chimneys and factories being grown over by nature.
During the residency I decided to take one day a week out of the studio and into nature, hiking the local trails. Here the abundance and beauty of the Serra da Estrela really became apparent. Each week the spring blossoms transformed from buds, to blooms, then to big green leaves. Watching this transformation happen in real time also influenced the final work. I wanted to create a space that wasn’t static but was in a state of transformation.
Here is the final piece, ‘O rio’, and there’s a link to my website here with more images of it as well as the text from the exhibition sheet.
It was so great to have time to set up the final piece within the space. To see how it responded to light and to let it grow organically. It’s made me realise that (if possible) I’d love to be able to have longer instal times for exhibitions and installations. Rushing that last bit has caused so much stress in the past as textiles don’t always behave as planned, especially when 3D.
I also really loved the immersive nature of this residency. Time away from everyday life to let art take first place, it felt like such a privilege. All residencies are different, of course, but this one is particularly spacious and supportive. I’m very grateful to New Hand Lab for selecting me to make this work.
