Gallery Books

Gesichter Faces - Sara Lechner

Faces are the places from where the world outside begins to talk to the world within. They are the gates to the subconscious and the realm of the fairy tale. Each story starts in a face.
Just looking at a landscape, it remains nothing but. The moment that I detect in that very scenery a circle, a pair of eyes gazing at me, or a nose and mouth, I start seeking after a reason, a context, a voice. When the motion, the gates and colours, the earth and the sky change into a stage I am taken back to my childhood. Very far away, with a feeling that all sense of time has ceased to exist, a languid sensation which evokes a siesta in midday heat, stillness, the humming of bees; where the arcane floral patterns of an English Garden turn into a well of hidden figures which is never running dry.
The negative areas between the stems and the leaves turn into witches and gargoyles, dwarfs and fairies. No dulcet stories are told in those lines and contrasts; it would invite boredom otherwise. Interwoven is always the fleeing reality with its genuine experiences.
Nothing is as sweet or evil as it looks at first glance; as life itself is neither. It is simply life. I prefer to take it with a smile as long as I can.
And the material? I feel at home around fabrics, fibers, paper and wire which are connected, sewn, torn, modelled. Everything has to be light, transparent, interwoven, fleeting.
There are creatures and buildings which are visible to the eye, and some which have to be divined.
There are so many waiting to be born...

An-Gewand-t: Felted features the beautiful work of German feltmaker, Inge Bauer. Inge's nuno clothing is as widely admired as is the artist herself and in addition to the sophisticated colorways, Inge's work will inspire better fit and drape in your nuno felted garments.

Textile Nature - Elsbeth Nusser-Lampe

Nature as a creative theme has moved and inspired many a generation of artists. The increasing interest in this subiect is by no means just a fleeting trend. It mirrors the proven fact that man is destroying nature through his thoughtlessness and greed, thus jeopardizing his very existence on this planet.
Also in textile arts many works and objects are dedicated to nature. In her astounding variety and from different points of view this eternal source of inspiration is being transformed into textile art with corresponding materials. I am not concerned with creating a lifelike reproduction, let alone an exact copy of any forms existing in nature. My quest is for the expression of movement and lightness which will in turn inspire and move the viewer. In my eyes, a too naturalistic way of expression restricts both viewer and artist. My work, on the contrary, is meant to put the different interpretations, emotions and phantasies into perspective.
I always have been a lover of fabrics in general, which eventually brought me in touch with patchwork and quilting in the mid-eighties. The studying and practising of these two highly traditional crafts represented my initiation into the world of textile art forms. After quilting with the traditional patterns and taking courses in design and colour my interest in more contemporary patchwork techniques grew steadily. In the search for one's own artistic "voice", it is, as always, important not to forget the old textile traditions. Free machine-embroidery has literally given "wings" to my creations.
The structuring and modification of the textile surface with stitch gained ever more importance. Free machine-embroidery is still in the focus of the technical realisation of my art. I did very little stitching by hand over a long period of time, but this has changed in my more recent work. Additional techniques which I have employed over the course of the years are dyeing experiments, printing techniques, bleaching methods, embroidery with non-textile materials and on water-soluble vilenes, and disintegration of the fabric through melting.
The main source of inspiration for my craft, though, remains always nature itself. The points of origin are flowers, trees, grass, leaves and microorganisms.

Textile Kostbarkeiten / Textile Treasures - Judith Mundwiler

Ever since my childhood, handcraft in connection with textile materials has been an important part of my leisure activities. Animated and inspired by my mother's sewing, knitting and crocheting, I began creating artistic objects, dolls’ attire and, eventually, my own dresses.
During my 4-year training as a textile craft teacher, I learned the professional handling of diverse textile and non-textile materials and techniques. The inner urge to visualize my feelings and thoughts through textile art has been growing stronger over the years.
In 2002 I was given the opportunity to present my artworks to a large international audience in France, in the Val d'Argent. This impressing experience made it clear to me that I could touch and move other people through the messages which are literally sewed into my textile works of art.
An even more intense examination of my own picture worlds and the textile possibilities of their realization were the consequences. Up until today this fascination has not diminished.
In my works I mainly use waste materials which most probably would have been dumped unnoticed. I temporarily save them from transience and give them a new purpose in connection with textiles. I use tea bags, praline tin foil, old books’ pages and rusty wires, but also natural materials such as different species of grass, blossoms and seeds, which I then combine with Korean silk and other, mainly transparent, textiles.
One of the ways to express myself through textile art manifests itself in small-sized, detailed and grid- like obiects, which can be seen at the beginning of this book. Powerful, moving and personally important issues and themes I have to express in large formats. For that I choose fabrics which I print on, label, laminate, melt or fray before I combine them to multilayered, yet translucent tapes by machine or hand embroidery. A multitude of such tapes I then layer on top of or next to each other. By that I manage to create an effect of depth without losing lightness or transparency. This is of particular importance because I also included soul-stirring and sad themes in my latest works, or the profound contemplations on life, farewell and death of my good friend, the poet Susanne Ernst. This is done in the hope that my artworks may console, brighten up or give confidence through their lightness and complexity in the face of the omnipresent transience.
On my many walks I keep discovering that sun, wind, rain, heat and cold have shaping techniques on both natural and man-made objects which are stunningly similar to the techniques I use in my artistic work. Metal rusts, colour peels off, bark bursts open, larva feed on wood and moss and lichen settle on surfaces. Here these fascinating similarities are juxtaposed.

Filz Spiel / The Felted Play - Annette Quentin-Stoll

ln 1998 in Finland there began a short story about felt, which is the subiect of this book. As an exchange student I was able to train in the felt faculty of Joensuu School for four months. ln my own college, felting techniques were regarded very critically.
My first task was to produce pieces with straight, precise edges, a comparatively boring exercise which elicited only shaking of the head from my fellow Finnish students. Nevertheless, I still feel the benefits of having learnt that. The most exciting thing about felting, however, was and is the possibility of working three- dimensionally without seams. Out of these perfectly square pieces I made points, folds, pockets, bumps and tubes grow. A tactile wall of nine units for visually-impaired people came into being (inner cover), having at its centre a ‘wobbly cone’.

Filz Experiment - Annette Quentin-Stoll and Robert Quentin

Die hier vorgestellten Filzverfahren entstanden experimentell auf der Suche nach Strukturen, die der Haut bzw. dem Stachel- oder Fellkleid von Tieren ähneln. Im Katalog zu einer Ausstellung über zeitgenössische iapanische Textilien (Structure and Surface — Contemporary Japanese Textiles) fand ich Abbildungen synthetischer Stoffe, die mittels thermischer Verfahren verformt wurden und drei- dimensionale Strukturen bildeten.
Dies brachte mich auf die Idee, Ähnliches mit Filz zu versuchen. Die beschriebenen iapanischen Textilien haben ihren Ursprung im Shibori (shiboru: wringen, pressen, drücken). Da der Begriff Shibori allerdings in erster Linie als Reserveförbetechnik bekannt ist, nenne ich die Ergebnisse der Experimente nicht Shibori-Filz, sondern Elastische Strukturen.