TALKING TEXTILES
Waxman Textile Prize – Winners #2016
I am My Mother’s Only One (2015) Julia Wright
Dorothy Waxman and Edelkoort Inc. are pleased to announce the winner of the 2016 Dorothy Waxman International Textile Design Prize: Rhode Island School of Design’s Julia Wright! Mohawk Group has generously supported this year’s prize of easy payday loans $5,000 which was awarded to Julia for the visual language she employs to make her textiles talk, from the sophisticated collage aesthetics of her jacquards to the creative use of bleach and dyes applied by hand.
The jury also decided to create a Jury Special Mention for the work of Christian Frank Müller, who studies at the Kunstuniversitat Linz and previews the making of patterns with a human intervention before machines weave the rest of the textile.
Both works will join the other finalists on display at WANTED DESIGN this May 7 – 17, 2016 in New York:
INDUSTRY CITY
Sunset Park, 274 36th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11232
Jury Members:
DOROTHY WAXMAN – President
ROYCE EPSTEIN – Director, Design Segment, Mohawk Group
ODILE HAINAUT – Founder, WantedDesign
PAUL MAKOVSKY – Editorial Director, Metropolis
MATILDA MCQUAID – Deputy Curatorial Director, Cooper Hewitt
HELEN OJI – Creative, Inspiration & Research Director, Eileen Fisher
Julia Wright (United States)
Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)
I am My Mother’s Only One, 2015
“I am my mother’s only child, only daughter, only friend.” The structure of Wright’s family has shifted significantly since her parent’s recent divorce, and as such, each member of what was a three-person unit has learned to live on their own. This piece was created through Wright’s reflection on childhood and her relationship with her mother, serving as a sort of necessary step for the designer to accept this new situation. Wright says her memory is driven by colour and shape, and through using the jacquard loom she was able to translate a personal photographic collage into a thick woven fabric, tangible and soft. Each cut square serves as a physical and material reminder of sweet childhood memories; the organization of which is unfixed and ever-changing. This work was created by collage and painting, and translated through Point Carre software to become woven pieces created on a Staubli jacquard loom. It is a 7-wefted weave, and has been cut apart and reconfigured. Many pieces were painted after weaving with bleach or dye.
Christian Frank Müller (Germany)
Kunstuniversitat Linz, Austria
TexLab, 2015
As a multi skilled designer and PhD student with a specialisation in textile design, Müller realises a wide range of different projects along the themes of diversity, details and simplicity with a twist. He perceives that design has a crucial influence on our lives. Good design improves our everyday lives and should be sustainable in terms of long lasting, timelessness, the use of the right materials and flexibility in use. And of course it should look good in every situation. Design is not pure decoration, it is the right ingredients mixed together in order to create a new, unexpected experience.
Müller says of his work: “I like simple things. Some people would say boring, but boring is in my opinion not bad. It’s just the absence of excitement in a world that is full of exciting things and where every new object is just trying to raise the level of excitement.”
In this experimental collection, fabrics are made with different unconventional dyeing, weaving and knitting techniques. Injection dyeing is used on folded, woven fabrics before they unfold to reveal a placed pattern of bleeding spots. Dye is also injected into bobbins and knitting spools before moiré and marle fabrics are machine woven or knit.