Project 2
Stage one- Research six artists or designers
H ilary Bower
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| Hillary Bower www.westdean.org.uk |
I like Bower’s work because it feels a bit dangerous. It’s both what she does and what she uses that does it.
This information is from http://www.hilarybower.com/fiberarts.pdf and even though it was written in 2007 it is a very interesting article.
Bower says that she does bleak well; she prefers the winter months because there’s more of the bleak and stark. She says
It’s the colours and textures that aren’t there, that I try to find....I like edginess.
Gathering to small (with detail) 2006 lead, calico,
linen thread, wood, acrylics 5.5 x 15.75 x 15.75 cm
Bower uses all manner of unusual things
wire, lead, nails and aluminium alongside organdie, muslin and linen threads.
As she has matured as an artist Bower has found that her palette has become increasingly sombre and repetition has become a particular interest,
But within Bower’s increasingly expanded vocabulary of materials repetition also fulfills her desire to find beauty and importance in the insignificant.
On her current website, http://www.hilarybower.com/Artist%20Statement.htm Bower makes a statement about her work:
As ideas have developed over the years, Bower's practice has increasingly focused on (www.westdean.org) personal and professional associations with people, places and journeying: all absorbed through the process of quiet observation. Recent works also represent a desire for clarity and the search for a language through which to express a comprehension of a world which is both material and non-material. The notion of silence and waiting, of incidental marking and matter, of space and substance are critical areas of current research.
There is a response to and an appreciation of the unexceptional, the bleak, the utilitarian and the unassuming. Within all of this there is an ongoing investigation into the use of materials, such as wood and metal in conjunction with cloth and thread, with an increasing interest in sculptural forms, construction and how space around and within is affected and affecting.
In “Making and Drawing” (2012) Kyra Cane perceives that the work
....might be Bower’s thoughts rendered visible; her obsesive attention to detail produces beautiful elusive surfaces that ate lacerated and punctured and distressed, drawings that seek some kind of resolution and balance through the opposition of forces.
Cane goes on to explain how
experiences in life have led her (Bower) to believe in the potential of every single person and the hidden depths of the rejected and overlooked. She uses humble objects as a means of encouraging us to reconsider such fundamental principles.
Bower exhibited at Cloth and Memory 2 in 2013 at Salts Mill. In the exhibition catalogue (Millar L, 2013) she describes her emotional response to the space
What first struck me on entering the roof space at Salts Mill was the sheer scale and then the sense of past presences, both human and no human. The sense of production; the human endevour on many levels seeping out of the air and echoing around is still strong.
Bower made 7 sacks each 198 x 92 cm and they hung trailing on the floor on top of dust and bits of flaking paint from around the Mill. Each sack was filled with waste of some sort to give it weight.
Of human signage - Hilary Bower
www.craftscouncil.org.uk
Of human signage – Hilary Bower
ocatextiles.wordpress.com
The sacks
act as a metaphor for the repetition of making, of human physicality, of a memory, of loss, of containment, of holding and of silence; of a space not empty but filled.
The materials used in the sacks are all the ones alluded to earlier, linen, calico, plywood etc.
I like the way Bower seems to wear her heart on her sleeve.
Bibliography
Cane, K. 2010 Making and Drawing, Bloomsbury, London
Millar, L. 2013 Cloth and Memory 2, Salts Mill
ocatextiles.wordpress.uk.
www.craftscouncil.org.uk.
www.hilarybower.com/fiberarts.pdf.
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