The Rest Will Be Familiar To You

A knitted fabric is not unlike a body.

I make knitted situations, material poems. I think of the body engaging in craft and how it is moving, its accumulated ways. I observe the choreography that takes place between a body and a material, and I try to capture these gestures. A body gathers movements and memories that stretch, expand, tighten, unfold and release as I move around, as I make. Can making be an act of remembering?

A knitting machine is not unlike a body.

A complex symphony of intricate pieces, inner workings, and structures. I listen to the chatter of its needle teeth as it constructs its knitted tales. It is sensitive to my attentiveness; stop listening and holes might appear in the narrative. I must be mindful of our discourse considering the tension and weight of our dialogue. It has its ways and I have mine, we get to know each other’s gait. We engage in a dance, performing the making, or as movement artist Simone Forti says; “Moving the telling”.

Can an act become an object?

Knitted situations can be read as a map, as movements, as theatre plays. I look for ways to reunite the action of making with its object, constructing a context much like a stage or a playroom. This is a space for relating and moving; subject and object in constant flux.

I arrange and re-arrange my material happenings, their stories change with every re-telling, perhaps my memories do this too.

Caught in a play,

a dancer, a maker,

Can we change the subject?

Published in Textile Design