Deborah
Wynne asks Emily about her practice as a poet and artist.
DW: You use text quite often in your art, do the
words inspire the artwork, or does the art inspire the words?
EW: They usually evolve at the same
time, I find that making visual work evokes a mood which then informs the
language I am attracted to, and vice versa. Having said that, I sometimes write
words inspired by a visual piece or a photograph, but don’t often come up with
artwork based on pre-existing words.
DW: How do you source the
materials in your textile art and collages?
EW: I collect magazines, second hand books, postcards and bits of
ephemera. It helps to be a bit of a hoarder! I also save scraps of nice paper
and offcuts of fabric. Most of the fabrics I use are second hand; either finds
from charity shops or old things I cut up. I also create my own surfaces by
putting papers and fabrics through processes to make texture and alter colours.
Scrapstores are a great resource too, and luckily we have one locally in Church
Stretton.
DW: The
natural world seems to be a considerable inspiration for your work – why is
this the case?
EW: I’m a country girl at heart and
feel happiest when surrounded by nature or not far from wild places. By working
creatively with or in landscapes I think we explore our inner emotional worlds.
I suppose that for some people that might be cities or urban environments, but
for me it’s mountains and oceans. I also find our connection as humans to the
natural world fascinating, and care about protecting the environment.
DW: What
are the challenges of creating 3D artwork?
EW: Some of my 3D work is actually
quite flat so in a way it’s not so different to working with collage, just in
relief. With items such as my paper shoes it’s more like creating a garment
from a pattern, these are quite fiddly to make however! I haven’t worked on a
large scale in 3D which is where the real challenge would probably come
in.
DW: What
are your favourite textile fabrics to work with?
EW: As mentioned earlier I like to work
with second hand fabrics to give them a new life, I also like the sense of
history and stories they carry. Wool is lovely to work with and I enjoy other
natural fibres like linen, bamboo and silk which is one of the reasons I am
really looking forward to working with you at Macclesfield Silk Museum next
April.
DW: What inspires you to create
book arts?
EW: I’ve always loved books and have
read a lot since early childhood. I love them as tactile, comforting,
intriguing objects and am not draw to kindles or e-books in the
slightest!
DW: How
did your film poem, Lines of Flight
develop?
EW: It came out of a series of
conversations with a friend (and other writer of the piece) Jeppe Dyrendom
Grauggard who I met through the Dark Mountain Project (http://dark-mountain.net). At the time he was living in Berlin and I in Scotland, and
after talking about subjects like home, nomadism and belonging we started an
exchange where we filmed clips from the environments we lived in and started
writing from them. We were very pleased indeed when it got screened at the
Antwerp Filmpoem Festival about three years ago.
Emily Wilkinson will be running a creative
workshop at the Story of Silk event
at Macclesfield Silk Museum on 1st April 2017. To find out more
about this event, see the previous blog post or email: d.wynne@chester.ac.uk
