Liz Collins

Name: Liz Collins

Studio location: Brooklyn, NY

Website / social links: lizcollins.com, @lizzycollins7

Loom type or tool preference: digital, automated jacquard

Years weaving: 30

Fiber inclination: silk

 

 

1. How did you discover weaving and was what your greatest resource as a beginner?

As a child I learned lots of kid weaving things like the potholder looms and so on. I loved making things so was endlessly immersed in crafty pursuits, weaving and otherwise.

I have a vivid memory of seeing a huge kente cloth exhibition at the National Museum of African Art in DC, and being deeply moved and inspired by that. Around the same time a big Junichi Arai show happened at RISD, just as I was entering the textile dept, so that radically affected how I saw weaving and fabric in general. I learned weaving at RISD, and my professor Lisa Scull had a huge influence on my weaving journey.

2. How do you define your practice – do you consider yourself an artist / craftsperson / weaver / designer / general creative or a combination of those? Is this definition important to you?

I am an artist and designer. Yes, I am proud to be both!

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

My first experience of real loom weaving was in my beginning weaving class in college. I had transferred into textiles from the jewelry and light metals department which I left because I didn’t like working with metal. I still remember how thrilled I was when I was winding my first warp. I couldn’t believe that I had color in my hands and that it was malleable. I was enthralled by the repetition and technical aspects of the medium from the outset.

4. What is your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished piece? Are there specific weave structures, looms, or fibers that are important to your process?

My process is multifaceted and half the time is engaged with some sort of directive. I become a responder to presented variables. It could be a space, an idea, a problem to solve, or even a prompt to come up with my own idea. I often delve into materials as a way to put parameters around any given thing.

My work with the textile mills usually involves a series of steps :

• Learning the mill’s capabilities and material options (usually involves a visit)

• Contemplating what I want to create knowing those things

• Exploring my archive of drawings & paintings, or making new works with the woven textile end goal in mind

• Generating digital artwork to be translated by the mill

• Lots of correspondence with the mill- can take weeks to months

• Sampling /experiments

• Revisions

• Generating bigger pieces

• Once the fabric arrives in my studio the general goal is to transform it through deconstruction, surface embellishment or some other sort of hand applied treatment

I try to establish ongoing relationships with Mills so I can keep going back to them to make more things.

 5. Does your work have a conceptual purpose or greater meaning? If so, do you center your making around these concepts?

Usually, yes.

I am motivated to make art by many different things and I think the simplest way to put it is that it’s a natural extension of how I live in the world and express my interests and experiences on all levels.

 

6. What is your favorite part of the weaving process and why? What’s your least favorite?

Even though I’m talking all about digital industrial automated weaving, I was obsessed with hand weaving for several years during and after college, so those processes are deep body memories .. I still love setting up a warp.

I had a job right out of college where I worked at a design studio in the garment district and we wove swatches all day. I learned how to set up a loom really fast and have always enjoyed all the steps from winding the warp to threading the heddles to creating the tension..

The work I do with weaving mills is so inspiring every step of the way. I love being in that factory landscape, working with big machines, and I love seeing big beautiful pieces of fabric materialize through these machines. I love the scale, the speed, the intricacies of structure, and the inexhaustible possibilities of making with this pursuit.

7. Do you sell your work or make a living from weaving? If so, what does that look like and how has that affected your studio practice?

I make a living doing a range of different things from commissioned pieces and bodies of work to selling my artworks.

I used to teach to support my work but have replaced that work with design projects that I do at a range of scales, from custom rugs and carpets to collaborations with textile, wall covering, and furniture companies.

The work I do in one area often feeds into the other. My studio practice is very fluid and at any given moment I am working on 3 to 5 projects that sometimes can’t help but influence each other.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

Everywhere! Nature, materials, relationships, architecture, music, light, sound, bike riding, pop culture, film, art and design, friends, my family, love and other emotions. I really do find inspiration everywhere. Being alive and experiencing life as a human and taking in the world fuels my work.

9. What other creatives do you admire – weavers, artists, entrepreneurs – and why?

I admire so many creative people. The list is too long!

So I’ll pull a handful from it, in no particular order, with some specifics beyond loving their work:

Yayoi Kusama for her wild art life

Agnes Martin for her focus

Igshaan Adams for his very special tapestries

Jeffrey Gibson for his exquisite ever expanding vision

Guadelupe Maravilla for his profoundly powerful work

Nancy Grossman for her gutsy and subversive spirit

Andrea Zittel for her masterful fusion of art & design

The list goes on and on….

I also admire Li Edelkoort for the work she has done to assert the cultural significance of textiles.

10. If you could no longer weave, what would you do instead?

All the other stuff I already do.

Paint.

Stitch.

Deconstruct.

10. Do you have any upcoming exhibits, talks, or events the community should know about?

news: NEW TEXTILE COLLECTION FOR POLLACK

current:

Goodnight House and Fort Makers through May 27

OBJECTS: USA 2020 and R & Company till September 21

Inside ~Out and Saint Marks Place, Brooklyn  from May 13- June 18

 

upcoming:

Omniscient: Queer Documentation in an Image Culture and Leslie Lohman Museum from June 18- Jan 2, '22 

Counterbalance and Chautauqua Visual Arts from June 27-July 25

Stairs, 2 person show with Gabrielle Shelton at Candice Madey Gallery from Dec 21-Jan 22