The back of a Bear

The third Bear work  again uses the same Bear Icons, but reverses their visual nature.

I have turned them from positive into negative spaces on the garment surface. I've also swapped to a machined process of constructing new material from workshop scraps.

The density of machined 'scrapscape' has a satisfaction and sensuality of its own. For this garment, a wraparound skirt, I've chosen woollen scraps which makes a very solid material.

Originally the skirt was made with the image reduced down to just a bear shadow, removing more of the clarity in the original iconography.

There are often incidental issues of aestetics and technique in these textile works which are their own investigation. I this Bear Skirt there are stages of aesthetic decision making which play with my interest in the issues of chaos and order.

Working with a pile of scrapscapes in colour themes, they were rearranged many times, looking at colour and tone balance. The results at this stage are aesthetic, although when the garment was complete, the choice I made, enhanced the transition from a two dimensional plane into a three dimensional object.

The graded tone and colour in the flat plane, allows for the chaos within each panel and the ambiguity of the Bear holes a bit of visual authority.

When the structure of the garment was finished, the Bear holes didn't feel concluded, it may have been the tone of the backing fabric was wrong. I decided to return to the original line drawings, putting  them back in their original place on the back of the garment as they appear in the Bear Wrap.

By wetting down the ink, their image was taken through to the front surface but with an unpredictability that suited the overall artwork.