Yesterday I taught my Extreme Textiles course at Capilano College with the help of the talented Ms. Hilary Young. I have taught this a number of times to the Textile Arts students. Never has it been such a wonderful day.
The students keep getting more talented every year and the caliber of both their work and capacity is really exciting.
There were a number of students who invented new burning techniques on the spot. One burned an industrial felt meant to wrap bicycles and the result was amazing. The felt was a gray blend and about 1/4 of an inch thick. It came out looking like carved stone or very encrusted concrete. Some of it looked like a filigreed metal with salt spray on it. The same student played with burning leather. It looked gorgeous but really smelled like ancient roasts burning on a fire.
I suggested that we try branding techniques. Another student tried a burn with the hot gun and used a polyester cotton velvet with existing devored like patterns. It turned into instant scale like patterns and the scales faced different directions. Completely delicious!
I did my regular health and safety rant and added a little about environmental concerns. They all listened carefully and hooded up. I had to do two sessions of hands on practical.
This year was much more organized. Hilary and I worked very well together and the number of samples and books was reduced from 6 trunks to two. Perhaps just a little too much. I made new samplers for each process with notes attached to the back and the skills were broken down to the point where the information was able to be relayed in a fun and logical way. Hilary brought technology and we hopped from the "in hand" to the "on screen" in a way that kept things animated.
The stations were also set up to physically move the students through a logical sequence of skills and brought them from the most fundamental burning of paper to the most complex layering of three dimensional objects.
Nothing is more satisfying to me than a group of promising textile artists digging through my samples and experiments. How lovely to see little feet showing while the artist is buried in cloth!
Students have agreed to come to the Guild to present and more than two students want to work with me as practicum students.
The Icing on the Cake was that two of the students were people whose mothers I had worked with in my activist life. I had met these young women as children. They stood with me at demos and picket lines as little girls and now both work with their textiles in a political way. Watch in future for the work of Maddy Stannard and Katy Kilgour!
How great is that!
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