Page 36 - The Digital Cloth - issue 8

Three Dimensional Textile Art by

Wai-Yuk Kennedy

I first started working with textiles of sewing and pattern making. I draw
when I was a child in Hong Kong, inspiration from the many places I’ve
where my family ran a small textile visited: the plants and rivers of Hong
factory. After leaving school, I started Kong, the rugged shapes and
working in the family business textures of North Cornwall, the
designing and manufacturing gloves, patterns and prints of India, and the

while studying graphic design, castles and gardens of Japan. I carry
dressmaking and pattern cutting after my camera with me everywhere so I
work. I came to the UK in 1978, in can snap shots of the tiny wonders
order to study for a degree in fine art, that catch my eye through the day:
unaware that within a year I would from parking at a roadside to capture
meet and marry my Scottish mist pooling in a valley, or
husband, Alex, and stay here for zooming in on the peeling paint of a
good! door frame.

We moved to Cornwall in 1986 and Textile art is often thought of as a
raised our family while I continued to two-dimensional art form, where we

experiment and play with all kinds of seek to create images almost like we
textile techniques and designs. Over are painting with thread or
the years, I gradually developed the fabric. I became curious about
techniques that form the basis of whether textiles could be developed
my textile art and eventually began into a three-dimensional art form
selling my work in 2006. Since then, I akin to sculpture, while still
have been lucky enough to retaining the rich surface detail that
exhibit and sell work in different fabric allows. After a lot of
galleries around Cornwall and experimentation, I developed

beyond, and continue to search for techniques to create textile art
new inspirations and challenges. jewellery, as well as larger textile
sculptures and textile reliefs.
The influences on my work are as
diverse as my background. My love of I begin by creating a sheet of base
old Chinese stories and legends fabric. This is built up with layers of
collides with my day to day translucent material, like chiffon or
experience of the Cornish landscape. organza, stitched together using
My Fine Art training interacts with my machine embroidery, and then areas
fascination for the practical aspects of fabric are melted away to expose