Often, it’s a dazzlingly patterned fabric that makes a garment truly eye-catching—whether it’s a richly textured textile or an artful print. And who better to elevate the design of a textile than an artist?
With this in mind, the Textile Museum of Canada has invited 10 contemporary artists to each create a unique textile design. The innovative finished products were showcased last week at NYCxDESIGN—the design fair that takes over the city of New York each year—in an exhibition titled Greater Toronto, where the fabrics were printable on demand for the public.
We caught up with five of the artists whose pieces caught our fancy and picked their brains on where they got their inspiration for the project. Happy reading!
“Skyline is a colourful interpretation of the vibrant city of Toronto—it’s layers of different cultures, cuisines, colour, ethnicity, the life on its streets, and how the city embraces it all.”
Lyn Carter
“East Garafraxa is the rural township in which I live. I am surrounded by stripes in the form of worked farm fields that literally wrap around our property. Scribed into the landscape with the help of GPS, these organized rows of plantings mark the land as they have for centuries, in neat, regular striped patterns.”
Gary Taxali
“My artwork Our Life is a playful scene encapsulating city life and falling in love. Relationship struggles and human dynamics are themes I often explore in my work, and I like to convey this by employing words and characters. I love the idea of stories within stories.”
“My work is almost always about memory and the past. Often, as in this case, it is about how things change over time. And to be honest, it is usually about how things change for the worst. I suppose this textile design could be seen as making a statement about urban decay but that’s too pointed for me. It’s simply streetscapes and time. I guess it’s meant to be somewhat humorous too—I mean, the streets all go from charming to run down. And of course, I wanted it to be pretty as well.”
“My work is an exploration of our shifting roles in the face of fear, may it be real or imagined. Employing symbolism, repetition, detailing, and subtle humour, I pair notions of beauty and the grotesque to simultaneously attract and repulse.”
