Gemma Buxton: an interview

Article Added: 26/02/2010 14:11:07
This month HotHive Textiles have been catching up with textile artist Gemma Buxton, who has been telling us more about her work…

Can you tell us about the textiles you create?
I make bags, cushions and rugs in upcycled felted wool, using ‘raw edge’ appliqué to construct a decorative surface.  I started making the rugs first as baby play-mats and then carried the technique and designs over into smaller items. I’m now reversing the process and designing some much larger work to give my ideas more space.

What are the inspirations behind your items and are there any particular subject matters you like to use?
It’s important to me to be surrounded by colour and I love patterns and surface decoration of all kinds. I’ve been fascinated by the development of floral decoration in textiles from intricate eighteenth century English embroidery right up to colour saturated abstract designs of the mid-twentieth century. Any source of mediated surface decoration also interests me: tiles, wallpaper, carpets, natural history illustration, historical or contemporary.

I’m particularly inspired by children’s book illustration and vintage or just plain old dolls and toys. I love trawling the charity shops for children’s story books from the fifties, sixties and seventies. I love the idea of disappearing into a world of talking animals and living in an abundant garden, or a house where every surface is decorated and rich in colour.

What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a series of drawings that will become a complete set of pieces. A skirt, a coat or cape, a large rug/wall-hanging, and some small wall pieces. I’m playing around with the way I use colours and the appliqué together, so that some parts of the design are the same colour but can be seen in the cut shapes and the stitching contrasting with areas of complete colour overload.

This continues the work from the end of 2009 using new animal and bird imagery but with dolls and toys being introduced. Making larger more ambitious pieces, measured in metres not centimetres, has really allowed my imagination to run and will generate lots of ideas for my small bags, brooches and artists cards from the artwork.

Where can people buy your work?
I have a small selection on Etsy www.etsy.com/shop/gemmatextiles and I can do mail order through my website www.gemmabuxton.com. If people sign up to my mailing list on the website I can keep them up to date with the fairs and open studio events that I do.

You describe how you create your pieces by felting old woollen items in a washing machine. Is this easy to do and do you think others could do the same?
My basic technique is exactly that; basic! Stick a woolly jumper in a 60 degree wash and see what happens.
It’s easy but very hit and miss. 100% wool jumpers are not that common in charity shops and car boot sales any more, it’s mostly acrylic or mixed fibre knits. That’s why I now source my wool from recycling warehouses. I’ve had to rifle through at least 20 or more sacks to get one full of 100% wool. Even then there’s no guarantee it will felt in the machine. Some wool is treated to make it ‘machine washable’, most Marks and Spencer’s knitwear is like this.

When you only use upcycled material you don’t have complete control over colour and texture, which is why I sometimes use dylon to add to my choice of colours.

A more expensive technique would be to machine knit lengths of fabric in a yarn guaranteed to felt. I’ve seen projects in knitting books for making trinket boxes and bags out of felting your own knitting.

Why do you think that recycling and make-do-and-mend have become so popular in recent times?
We have all become more aware of environmental issues over the last ten years, but for the artist or hobby crafter there are wider reasons for making use of recycling.

A good choice of raw materials is something you have to really seek out these days. The domination of mass production and the ‘superstore’ business model has meant that dress and furnishing fabrics, raw modelling materials, even basic haberdashery and hardware rather than ready-made kits, have become luxury items.
Creative people rarely have endless disposable income so upcycling what you already have, or can get hold of cheaply and easily, is the obvious as well as the ‘green’ thing to do.

What are the biggest challenges for an artist?
Finding the right place to sell your work is really difficult. There are lots of different options, from small galleries and gift shops to national art and trade fairs, also online selling communities or direct selling through your own website. Finding the appropriate one for you and your work is confusing and expensive.

And what are the best bits?
The hours actually making things and being able to justify more and more books as research material!

If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring artists, what would it be?
Accept your art for what it is, be true to the art so that you can keep enjoying it. Even if you find a niche and make work that keeps selling, save some time for new ideas.

Where would you like to be in five years time?
I’d like to be making work that keeps selling!