Louise West: cotton to concrete and beyond

Date: 8/10/14                                                                            Speaker: Louise west - Lace

She has used a variety of designs and techniques to get to her point at the moment. Beginning by defining lace, she described it by “a collection of threads combined to make patterns and holes”. This was something in history, first beginning at the Egyptians and turning to England in the 16th century. The traditional lace masters not only brought the tools, they also brought seeds and veg still used in England today. The 19th century brought machines and the great exhibition brought and showed the Maltese lace.
She then described her work and qualifications, starting with city and guilds in 2005, and the diploma in the following year. She then did a BA hons in textile design in Derby University. Whilst this happened, she was asked to work for Nottingham contemporary, in creating lace, from a design, so they can make a mould from this.
However, there was issues and she ended up needing to Photoshop for 35 hours to create this lace. Eventually the mould was created and used concrete to add detail to the foundations of the building.

She finished her BA in 09, then went onto a masters (MA) and began focusing on flowers, drawing and researching as much as possible to create her work as good as possible. She began using silver clay, to create flowers, but it still has the concept, the holes, of lace. She then went to glass and for her final pieces she used glass, and wire for a sculpture. She described how the studio she was at, placed in the university, wasn’t good or big enough and then moved. This allowed her to have more space and to create her sculpture. She used a pillar, then created a wire mesh and her lace around this. Once finished, she had work in the Bowes museum.
She highlighted the BA as a big starting point and this was similar to Gemma G. She now does bobbin lace classes, for 6-8 people. Situated at the WEA, The Mill, Lodge Lane, Derby, DE1 3HB

Artists opinon: 

"A couple of weeks ago I posted the photo of the piece of Wisteria lace which I had recently finished, I have now finished a piece of pyrography of this design as well. I have only just started using this medium, but I really like the way this piece has worked in it, and now on the look out for more pieces of nice sycamore wood to work on. My late Father would now be laughing as I always said I wasn't going to get into wood! The pyrography panel is 135% of the original lace, this allows me to create 'lace' much bigger than the original design."

I am really inspired by this picture. It shows the lace design, but with ink. The colour is very dark and brown and reminds me of an old, withering away plant. From her talk, plants are one of her inspirations for this shoot. The print is big and inspires me to try different ways of showing my images and presenting them. This is including pyrography (the art of decorating wood or other materials with burn marks resulting from the controlled application of a heated object such as a poker).

Louisewestlacedesign.co.uk