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Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 1 . Illustration: Jeanne Raffer Beck. Pages 1 (detail). Ever since the creation of human writing there has been a fascination with the written word. At times it seems almost magical that abstract shapes can give us an understanding and knowledge not only of the world around us, but also of the individuals that inhabit it. When you take this analogy across time it becomes both astounding and poignant, with generations passing down glimpses of their personality, dreams and fears to those who follow after them. American textile and mixed media artist Jeanne Raffer Beck has made the written word one of the central cores of her creative work. As a long term professional writer she has an innate understanding of subtle inflection and intonation, the boundaries of words and the complexity of language. Although the written word cannot give us nearly as much information as the spoken word, with its particular and individual inflections and tone, there is...

Illustration: India Flint. Original textile work. The Australian textile and dye artist India Flint has taken elements from her family history and turned it into a creative journey that gives the impression of becoming a lifelong one. Flint has always been intrigued and imbued with her family's make-do-and-mend attitude. An interest that has taken up her family's particular practical interest in textiles and natural dyeing, expanding the experience to produce work that is staggering in its range of complexity. Using a variety of raw materials and experimental processes, she has managed to deliver an ever-widening range of unique colours and textures. Although this article could well concentrate purely on the textile artwork of Flint, it seems more pressing and relevant to focus on her groundbreaking work concerning the natural dyeing process. It is her belief in achieving a near-zero impact, within a textile dyeing capacity, that has become an inspiration to others not only in ...

Textiles have always been such a large part of domestic life, as it still is today. However, what has sadly faded away producing a rupture in the constant that was for generations such an intimate part of life, is that of the craft skills that supported all forms of domestic textiles. Centuries of creative and repairing skills have died out within a generation; many will probably never again be resurrected on the same scale as that of our ancestors. In Closet Archaeology , the artist Diane Savona has created a form of vocabulary library of lost skills. However sad this may seem to one devoted to the textile crafts, perhaps more poignant still is the sense of lost lives and lost memories. Textiles, in many households, were literally often passed down over the generations. Therefore, woven, sewn, embroidered, crocheted, knitted and quilted forms often outlived their original owners. Many were offered as wedding or christening gifts from older to younger members of the same family. These ...

Illustration: Nancy Clearwater Herman. In the Lady's Room. Felt work can be achieved through a number of formats and craft disciplines. To many it may seem thick, woolly and uneasy to manipulate. However, there are various means of controlling the chance and often arbitrary results of standard felting. Needle felting is a particularly good format as it allows a larger element of both precision and definition within felting. Compositions can be manipulated and engineered into any amount of decorative pattern and artwork. The artistic parameters of needle felting are particularly rich as is shown in the textile artwork of Nancy Clearwater Herman. Herman has produced a set of compositions that helps to lay to rest the idea that felt is a medium best suited to the practical and domestic aspects of textiles, rather than any form of fine art textiles. She has produced work that is extraordinarily exact, while at the same time being free from most forms of mechanised textile production....

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #8 , 2008. The Big Leaf series of textile art pieces by the artist Dominie Nash allows us to see both the robustness of the natural world along with the delicate and transient character that we often associate with particular aspects of nature. Leaves seem especially poignant to us with their ability to haunt us with ideas about decay and death. However, leaves should also be seen as an aspect of the cycle of life, dropped leaves in autumn only showing us part of that cycle. Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #9 , 2008. Nash may well have been initially inspired to produce a series of textile art pieces using the construction, both delicate and robust, of a leaf, however the sequence of compositions that she has produced go a long way past any mere observational interest or aspect. These pieces have taken the most important features of the leaf from its complex colour tones to the emulation of the skeletal structure of the lea...

Illustration: Terrol Dew Johnson. Form Over Function #1. Terrol Dew Johnson started basketry weaving at the age of ten. He soon learned that he was a born natural and found that it was one of the few things in life that he found intrinsically effortless. Johnson is a member of the Tohono O'odham nation of southern Arizona. The Tohono O'odham have a long history of basket weaving using a whole variety of techniques using natural materials and dyes. These are all used in order to tie the basketry in with the local landscape colours and flora, making the baskets part of the community and of the larger landscape. Illustration: Terrol Dew Johnson. The traditional basketry weaving techniques that Johnson learnt at such an early age, have allowed him to expand into the world of contemporary fine art basketry, while still keeping hold of his traditions, which he uses as a foundation or anchor point for his subsequent career as an artist. Johnson has definitely turned the craft skill ...