Laura McCafferty

There has been one practitioner that has had a big influence on the work I have recently developed, Laura Mccaferty’s work is also very illustrative and works similarly to me using a mixture between screen printing, embroidery and appliqué.  She finds inspiration from her travels around the world as well as her life at home. I aim my work to be a form of preserving the past, I feel this comes from some deep emotion in me from which I don’t want to forget memories of my own family members. One idea was that this work could be developed into a photo a album for kids with special needs, a tactile album which they can hold, feel and play with. I need my work to be fun and playful working with bright colours and textures so that they can feel the images. My work tells the story of my family but using another families photos it can tell the story of other families and can give those with special needs their photos and memories which they can then too cherish. 

 

Both images above are of work of Laura McCafferty.

Experimenting with new techniques.

I really wanted to push myself this year to develop my skills and learn new things, I wanted to experiment with fabric dying. Within my own practice a lot of my illustrations involve a lot of block colours. To start with I began buying dyed fabrics and then I went onto dying them myself. I knew I wanted to work with natural materials throughout my work so experimented with different weights of wool. I began involving them throughout my samples.

Another technique I used in which I hadn’t before was to get into screen printing, I have done a lot of digital printing before and I began using it within this project as well. The problem was the digital printing in University is very limited with the fabric in which you can print onto, I chose to print onto cotton but to then try and work the cotton into the heavy wools I found very difficult. Eventually I decided against as I felt it didn’t flow properly. I found screen printing very easy and it was a quick way to get work done. I eventually moved away from both techniques as I wasn’t getting the desired look that I wanted. 

New Inspiration, representing family.

Needing fresh inspiration I delved into looking at collections from my different family members primarily thimbles and stamps my father collected stamps and my mother has an ever growing collection of thimbles. In my eyes these collections represent my parents. I found the best way to portray my thoughts and ideas was through collages. Although it came to me what better collections are there to represent a family than photo albums. My direction slowly began to evolve and take shape it became very illustrative and graphic very different from my previous work. I pulled out photos that really capture a moment in time. My idea has evolved and I can see my work developing into a sort of tactile photo album.