Sadhvi Jawa

Name: Sadhvi Jawa

Studio location: Bangalore, India

Website / social links: sadhvijawa.in, @sadhvijawa

Loom type or tool preference: frame loom made of recycled wood

Years weaving: 6

Fiber inclination: cotton, silk, any natural fiber

Current favorite weaving book: Beyond Craft: Art Fabric

 

 

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

I learned to weave in undergraduate college in Bangalore, India. At that time, weaving made me nervous. I did not enjoy the process. Later, after 4 years in a restless phase of trying to find my calling, I tried to practice various crafts to discover what would keep me engaged for the years to come. I decided to give weaving a try again and taught myself ways of making frame looms with found materials and then eventually weave in them. This process kept me engaged for hours and days. This led to conducting a tapestry workshop for children, which then led to the making of a woven installation at a metro station in Bangalore in collaboration with placeARTS Youth Collective. By this time, I knew weaving is something I wanted to keep doing.

At that time, Ann Cathrin’s work inspired me and it continues to do so. The freeness of showing the warp threads, the handful of tied warp over the metal rod, the rawness and bareness of materials pulled me towards her work.

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?

My practice is at the intersection of all but what emerges more in me is an artist and a craftsperson. I become an artist when I want to ask important questions about the world we live in. Then at other times, l like to work as a craftsperson when I just want to make beautiful things that can be used in everyday life creating intimacy with the person using them.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

My first experience with weaving was tense. I was asked to weave flawlessly with a fine yarn. In my curiosity to experiment with different textures and colours in the weave, I started weaving with threads in various combinations of colours and textures. I was then asked to not experiment just yet and learn only the technicality of different weave structures using a fine yarn. At that time, it made the weaving process a grueling experience to not be able to have the creative freedom in experimenting with yarns and flow of colours.

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?

There is no linear methodology that I follow. However, there is strong research through photographs and drawings that is an intrinsic part of my creative process. Sometimes, I start by painting in my sketchbook, other times I go for walks and take photos of places, people, tools, textures, or I sit and learn interesting weave techniques that find their way in making final work. While I paint/take photos, I simultaneously use natural dyes to dye yarns and collect materials that tell colour and texture narratives from my research. I am more inclined towards using materials and colours that do not harm the environment, for example using cotton yarn that is grown organically, using banana fibre yarn that is made from agro waste, using recycled yarn and so on.

I also incorporate materials like metal and clay in weaving to tell a story. The choice of materials is carefully made that speaks of concepts I try to explore. What I paint starts getting woven onto a simple frame loom organically. The aesthetics of work changes as the weaving continues, I don’t always stick to the painted concept. I let my materials and techniques guide me and becomes what it wants to become.

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

When I started to weave, the intention was to learn the craft. As I progressed, very organically I began building narratives about rapidly changing of the rural and urban landscape of the city where I lived for over 15 years. I started working with the theme of co-existence of old and new ways of living. My material and colour explorations with weaving became about the pull and push, making and claiming, and the tension that happens in trying to exist with one another. I have woven many pieces around this theme. Along with this, I have tapestries about different cities where I have lived telling stories of visual, social and ecological identities of those places.

 

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

My favorite part is when the loom is set and the weaving has started. I like watching threads stacked one of the other becoming into a whole narrative slowly and steadily. My least favorite part is warping. I get restless at this part, I just want to quickly warp the loom and start weaving.

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 mostly make my work for exhibitions, since they are large scale and mixed media. It requires a lot of time finish each piece of work. I am in process of making large scale works that I can sell to sustain my studio practice. However, I have been selling smaller works through my Instagram account.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration in landscapes, both urban and rural, in visual culture of markets, professions, communities that occupy particular landscapes, patterns and textures of these places. At other times, I am inspired by nature- rock formations, patina, rivers, flowers, animals, insects.

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

Recently, I am inspired by Igshaan Adams work. His multilayered tapestries about his identity, materials of the neighborhood, capturing indigenous dance and more enmeshed in his work are powerful.

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

I would do gardening and grow organic food.