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Illustration: Barbara W. Watler. Fingerprint series #50: Unity. The textile artwork of Barbara W. Watler is intriguing in more ways than one. She gives us blown up images of small, intimate areas of life that we might well recognise as belonging to part of the near micro world. Through her unique imagery of the natural world that she sees around her, the artist allows us to connect to the intimate and the solitary, pinpointing the stand alone elements that make all aspects of the natural world unique. She helps us to understand how utterly unique and diverse this world really is. Illustration: Barbara W. Watler. Fingerprint Series #46: Vortex. Watler has a number of differing projects and sets of work, but probably her most well known series is that of her Fingerprint collection. This series of art pieces that now number more than fifty, is continually growing and transforming as it develops. It deals with the all too human twin obsessions of identity and the loss of that identity. F...

Illustration: Jette Clover. White Wall 1 , 2009. The work of the textile and mixed media artist Jette Clover deals with the graffiti of life. She has chosen to represent the visual language of the human species through the use of the written, rather than that of the spoken language. This is an important point to make, particularly as the written word becomes evermore increasingly vital to the everyday running of our contemporary world. However, although written language itself is relatively new in comparison to the age of the human species as a whole, representational markers of our presence have long been seen as a necessary part of our lives. Whether writing with recognised lettering, pictograms or other symbols, all are representations of both the individual and the culture they inhabited. It is this recognition of the potential of the individual through mark-making in whatever fashion, which seems to be at the heart of these particular pieces of textile work. Illustration: Jette Cl...

Illustration: Rayna Gillman. Kaddish. In this particular series of artwork pieces textile and mixed media artist Rayna Gillman appears to deal in fragments of generational memories. These are often physically overlaid in her work and can sometimes resemble a collaged and annotated journey. However, there is always more than one way to tell a story, even a fragmented one and Gillman's work gives us a creative glimpse of the magnitude of what has been lost and the fragile nature of what little has been saved. All the examples shown here of Gillman's work seem connected to the idea of the transitory nature of human life. They give an indication of how tantalising are the memories of past generations and how, in time, they become little more than so much scattered detritus with very few, if any connections to the contemporary world that they helped to produce and in which we inhabit. Illustration: Rayna Gillman. Cacophony. It is the casualness of recent generations, twinned with th...

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: Virginia Abrams. Reflections 5 , 2009. I am always pleasantly surprised and even intrigued when considering how many contemporary textile artists arrive at the genre from such diverse creative journeys and backgrounds. It perhaps says much about the comprehensive appeal of textile art that so many individuals feel compelled to take up the genre. Obviously, because of the diversity of these individual artists, textile art itself broadens its parameters immensely. The American textile artist Virginia Abrams has a background in organic chemistry and biochemistry. She is fascinated with the complex interactions of the natural world and her work is centred on this fascination. Abrams work runs on themes suggested by nature. I have chosen one of these themes water, to illustrate this article. All of these pieces are literally reflections. However, it would be misleading to believe that they are merely optical observations conceived by Abrams. These are complex recipes using ing...

Illustration: Ian O'Phelan. Night Flowers , 2009. The pattern work of the American artist, designer and illustrator Ian O'Phelan is an excellent example of the continuing relevance and contemporary usage of the repeat pattern. It is often thought that the great days of pattern work, whether that be textile or wallpaper, are well behind us and that the contemporary world has nothing of relevance to add to the accumulated wealth of the past. However, as the work featured in this article shows there are still a number of excellent young designers who are aware of both the historical context of pattern work and the relevance it has, or can have, to our contemporary world. Illustration: Ian O'Phelan. Fruit Vine II, 2009. Repeat pattern work is not the easiest of technical processes to master. To make a pattern appear both seamless and above all effortless is another process and level of achievement altogether. Although admittedly a basic repeat pattern is relatively easy to pr...