Weaving with Metal

Movement Captured Within The Woven Structure

During weaving class my Professor Micheal Radyk was showing us students contemporay fiber artists. And I started noticing a trend of using uncoventional materials. It made me start to looking at materials differently. As long as a material can be manulpulated into a warp or weft it can be woven with. 

                                                                                                               I began to wonder what metal would be like inside a warp (the strings that run length wise in a weaving). This is my first experiment with it. I wove a pattern inlay throughout to leave exposed plain weave areas to showoff the luster of the metal strands running through it. On this piece I noticed that with metal comes strength to bend and ability to hold shape.

The next project I designed had the ability to bend and hold shape in mind. Based upon the Antolope Canyon I created a a three panel weaving the could be molded to create the illusion of movement like rippling. The warp was made out of numerous types of yarn and sizes of metal. I found with this added complexity to the warp made the metal not as obvious but still provided a sparkle in the light. 

After working on a piece that was so dense and saturated with color I wanted to try and make a series that was light and airy with the metal. What I came up with was to combine metal with fishing line and vinyl coated yarn for the warp. The pieces I designed were to be veiwed in an open air situation so that the light could show through them. The lightness of the pieces allowed me to manuiplute them to have a curlly wave to them as if they were moving and active with in the space.