Marianne Kemp

Marianne Kemp (1976) has developed a unique specially in weaving with horsehair.

Weaving new surfaces that are ‘different', not to be recognised as the ‘conventional' weaving, Marianne develops her own techniques in the weaving process.
Using small bunches of horsehair, interwoven with linen or cotton, she creates exclusive fabrics in divers colours and surface textures. The horsehair is sourced from live horses overseas, mainly from the Far East, Mongolia.
In the weaving process she manipulates the bunches through knotting, curling and looping. Because the horsehair has unique qualities like it's shine, texture and length, each final weaving demonstrates an individual and exciting design. Shiny and smooth - organic and wild - flexible and stiff.

Marianne said, "I'm fascinated by the movement of the weavings, how the horsehair manifest in the net of the weaving technique."

The way the light falls on the weaving, plays an important role in the process and to the final product. Each piece of work has it's own unique character through the use of colours and techniques.

All weavings are made-in-house. In addition to working on commissions, she also makes installations for exhibitions. Her woven upholstery fabric is also available as the ‘MK' brand, mechanically woven at John Boyd Textiles, UK.

kimono

crawling hedgehogs

My Work;

I love this work as it reminds me of working with video tape thread, knitting with it to create almost like tunnels of material for the viewer to experience.
Here are some examples of some of my recent French Knitted video tape;

"Make do and Mend"

"Make do and Mend "

"Women were encouraged to repair and remake their family's old clothes. Old curtains were cut up to make skirts and dresses. Unwanted jumpers were unravelled and knitted into something else. "

http://www.nettlesworth.durham.sch.uk/time/wfash.html

My Materials

My Materials

I have been collecting matirials now for a long time, and for me it is always important to collect what there is to had around me as well as this being a source of inspiration.
It can vary from time to time but this is OK as is all part of the idea of working with what I have to had.

My main source of matirials has been plastic bags, this is for many two reasons, one being that for such a long time there was so many and I have always wanted to find a better use for them than throwing them away, and two I found the material so verssaital and interesting to work with I have always experimented with them.

I have colected manny matirials over the last few months and looked at how they can be transformed and worked with to create something new. This has been things such as video tapes, plastic bottles, plastic bags, scrap from the scrap store and so on. By logging the matirials that I have found and then collecting lots I can then start to prep the matirials ready to use. Recently I have been looking at knitting with the matirials and making the matirials into a thread some how.

This is what I have been doing for the last few weeks, collecting and preparing plastic bags, video tape and other waste to French knit with.
It has been easy to do as the environment that i have been living in is full of students who create lots of waste. This is not always good but brilliant for ma as it a continuse source of matirials for free.

This become an important environment to find matirials especialy as i was working and cleaning in and around the students on a daily bassis. Seeing just how much was thrown away made, and the amount of plastic which was accumulated made me even more passienate about working within this way.

"Making do with what's available to you"

For me this is when I feel most inspired, finding ways to reuse waste material that is Here are some of the matirials I have been preparing ready to use within my work; immediately to hand, and the idea of it becoming to an end makes me even more determined to create something of meaning and educational value, or at lest create conversation.

This is a selection of a few samples of prepared matirials


One way that of preparing, is t strip the bags into shreds so that you create a loop almost then link lots of them together and role it up as if it was a ball of wool.



Twisted loops of red and white bags


Twisted thin loops of black bin bags



Twisted loops of green and white plastic bags


Separated types of bags looped together

Separated bags looped together

Home Made

Home-Made Contemporary Russian Folk Artefacts

I have had this book for a long while now, it is one of my treasured books.

I thought that this book was highly appropriate with my current way of working and final outcomes for tools and reasons behind the need for them.
I have wrote about this book before in my research and reflection part of my MA, and for me it is increasingly becoming more aware to me just how important this book is.

It is an interesting book that contains highlights from Russian artist Vladimir Arkhipov's collection of unique artefacts. All the objects in this book are made by ordinary people from Russia who were inspired by the immediate lack of immediate access to manufactured goods during the collapse of the soviet union.
It is an archive of hundreds and hundreds of objects with mainly an idealistic functional qualities . Objects for both the inside and outside of the home.

I treasure this book and believe it has been beautifully made to archive all 220 individual artefacts that represent the soviet culture. Every piece has a photograph and a description of what it is and who has made it and why.

This type of documentation is descriptive and educational, telling the story of why, what and how.

Vasilii Arkhipov

On the front cover of the book shows a Television aerial. Made according to the dimensions of a television aerial found in a radio magazine. Made by using folks found in a mothers cupboard, reverts, aluminium pole, ventilator base and a screw connection. "Everyone particularly wanted to watch the programs from Petersburg"



Nastya Voronova

Made this lamp shade out of a hat, a dress and some thread, so that she could dim the light for her new baby daughter, as the light was far to bright. " Asya doesn't screw her eyes up any more"


Vladimir Antipov

A Street cleaners Shovel, made from a old road sign, rivets and a wooden handle. "They used to give us bloody useless spades so I decided to make one myself."


Alesksandr Chebotaryov

A toy locomotive, made from a beer can, tea tin, coaster, film canisters, bottle tops, wood, ruler, and drinking straws. It was made to occupy Mitka who was playing up and had pneumonia, the makeshift toy was to distract him. " I deliberately made it slowly, and we finished it off in about a week."

Home Made French Knitting Spool's

My Home Made Tools

I have had to make my own tools for French Knitting mainly as i was testing the idea out first but also i am always intrested in using matirials things and rubbish to create stuff with. I thought that by making a French Knitting spool from waste items that I had around me would be the perfect way to continue the recycling them.
My first idea was to use a inner tube from a toilet roll with some plastic plant labels taped around the edge to make the hook like shapes to create the loops when knitting.
This for me was the best way to work, I had the idea I wanted to make some French knitting and i just used what I had to had to do so.
Always growing up I have been told to . . . . . . . "Make do and Mend" . . . . . . . . . . "Make use of what I have got" . . . . . . . . . "Not to throw away perfectly good things" and so no.

I think growing up we were all told things such as this and for me it has always stuck.

I think that this could be partly as I am from a rather large family, eldest of seven and one of twenty-nine grandchildren. So with a upbringing where cost mattered and things were never wasted. certain things stuck with me, such as curling my hair with old rags from a bed sheet, making peg dolls with my mums pegs, tree house out of the old shed and fence panels. For me seeing something made from things which has had a past life is something quite inspiring. Making something from rubbish also has that sense of good will, your giving it a new life, new meaning, you are doing something other than just disregarding it as unwanted or rubbish.

My "Home Made" Knitting spools now have that sense of sentimental value as I had made them myself, and in a small way been imaginative with the matirials that i had to had.


This is the four main Knitting Spools that i made to begin with, so that i could have a series of different knitting on the go all at the same time, and using different matirials as well.



This is Knitting spool is made from a CD container which I found in Uni in a bin. All I did was cut off the top, (which I have kept for something else) and tape plant labels around the side which I got for free from the scrap store.

This Knitting spool ha been made from a used thread spool which I had cut in half and stuck some waste cable ties around the edge. I like this one because I like t use the end of the cable ties as a hook to stop the more resilient thread come off the hooks. All the matirials i used with this one was found in and around UNI waste bins.


This is just a toilet roll inner tube with plant labels taped around the edge.



This is just a toilet roll inner tube and waste cable ties, but this works really well to use for knitting with my Recycled video tape thread. The finished piece comes out quite delicate but really strong at the same time, I think that it helps that the hook parts of the spool are quite close together.

This is the same as the one before but the cable ties have been placed a bit further apart to make the loops bigger.



I feel that my "Home Made" Knitting spools have been quite successful and have in cureged me to look at other possibility's of knitting in this same way but looking at different types of materials to use for the spools.
It has also made me think more about scale and just how big or how small I could create a French knitted piece.

I feel that the next step for this would be looking at scale and matirials seeing which samples worked and developing them further.

My thoughts at this point also is seeing if this could be done on a much larger scale and some how making it interactive within a space, using again items which I have to hand that are waste found things transforming them into tools.

French Knitting

My French Knitting examples

All theses examples are made from recycled matirials things which i had found, or adapted into a tread, things which were unrivalled to become a tread or leftover matirials abandoned around the place where i work.

I have been experimenting with different types of matirials and French knitting with them on different scales to see what the out come would be for each material.
I created my own French Knitting tool to use from found items adapting to the strength and thickens of the treads which I had previously created, and this is some of the example that i have created. . . . . .




Here are some of the found threads which I had French knitted with to create long tubing


This piece was made from some black wire like material which didn't have much memory in it as it collapsed when it became bigger.



This piece was made from some odd bits of rough wool which I found at the local scrap store, i just joined them together to create a longer thread and then French knitted on a much larger scale. I find that working on a larger scale was fine but took a much longer time to complete a finished piece.

This piece was made from a thick elastic material which had been shredded in to a ball of thread, i also found this at the scrap store. I liked working with this elastic material as when i completed a sample piece and started to play around with it I found that by putting things inside made the kitted item become something different and this opened me up to other potabilities.
B y seeing what else could be incorporated with in the piece was what intrested me more with this material as it could stretch and be formed by other shapes.


I have also looked at creating a thread by French Knitting a Thread to then be re knitted on a larger scale, this is good to do it on a smaller scale as it meant that it took so much more less time to create.

Here I used a verry thin thread to knit with and knitted lots of it, as I was intrested what it would look like with the end stretched into another shape to create an other dimension to the long knitted piece. This reminded me a bi of the tine phones we would create as children although would not work in the same way but had that playfulness about it as it was so long.



This was what intrested me the most as a material, I use plastic bags on a regular basis and was wondering how i could incorporate the same ideas as the previous examples and experiments in the same way but by using plastic bags. I had to prepare lots of bags to create enough thread and with this example knit it on a large scale. I liked this material as when it was knitted together it gave it a different kind of strength, an elasticity strength just like past experiments. And is flexible to be shaped and reshaped as once it has been knitted. This has intrested me enoug to take these ideas further.. . . . . . .

Brece Honeycutt

Brece Honeycutt

artist statement On an early foggy October morning drive between Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA, I saw hundreds of spider webs. They were hanging in the pine trees and power lines along both sides of the thirty-mile road. These ephemeral webs, beautifully defined by the moisture from the fog, were not successfully photographed and remain in my memory.

During 2006-2007, I spun wool in public locations and digitally recorded stories related to me by passersby about spinning. The foggy drive brought me into visual contact with nature’s spinner and weaver, the spider, Arachne of Greek myth.

During my 2008 Residency at Pocket Utopia (Brooklyn, NY), I spun carded wool—a process taking a mass of fiber and making it into a strand of yarn, a long line. From these yards and yards of homespun, I constructed rudimentary weavings and knitted sculptures - drawings out of wool - and installed them in the unique spaces of Pocket Utopia.

Taken from http://www.mackenziefrere.com/poplar/gallery1A-index.html