P004 → Her Textiles
Influences are an important way to understand someone’s creative drive. My mother was a primary influence of mine. She knew I wanted to live a life in design and the arts long before I did. So she took me to all the museums and all the art supply stores she possibly could when I was growing up.
The irony is that I didn’t know how vital, visionary and meticulous she was as a textile designer herself until after her death in 2022. See, she couldn’t do anything less than 100%. She poured her heart and soul into her fiber work. Color, knap and tuft, pattern, composition, movement, flow, drape, tactility... she worked those conceptual tools masterfully. She could have stood shoulder to shoulder with Florence Knoll or Annie Albers. But once she had me and then my brother, she faced a binary and very personal choice: where would she put her 100%?
In the summer of 2022, while my brother, my sister-in-law and I filtered through our childhood home, processing through and disassembling the material history of our family, I discovered her archive hidden away in the attic. She had kept everything she had ever designed, including the paper loom schematics, sketches and design files. This was what she left behind when she chose us as her 100%. I had no idea it was all there.
It struck me in the moment: I had no idea because I never asked. Grief can be as much about what we’ve taken from those we love and what they gave to us as it is about losing them. Or maybe that’s all part of the same thing.
Amidst an avalanche of gratitude and sorrow I unpacked every swatch and bolt from eight large, stained and flaking cardboard boxes, photographed them, and placed them in new containers. They are with me now in New York City. Might be they’ll be with you too, soon, in some form. For what she gave up for me, and for what she gave to me, I’m focused now on finding collaborations and projects that allow her work to once again live out in the world.
One hundred fucking percent
© 2024 Elan M Cole