Katherine Soucie
Katherine Soucie (BAA Fashion Design; Dip. Textile Arts; BFA, Printmaking/Textiles; MAA Visual Art, Textiles) is a Canadian/UK award winning artist and designer who specialises in transforming textile industry waste into new textiles, clothing, sculptural forms and installations. She studied Fashion Design in London and Toronto, Ontario, Canada before furthering her studies in Textiles and Visual Art in Vancouver. Upon establishing her studio practice in 2003 her experimentation with textile industry waste and the discarded has resulted in an extensive body of work that has exhibited in Canada, USA, Hong Kong, China, Australia and UK.
Current art and/or research interest:
My practice as an artist is one that is clearly liminally positioned between art, craft and design. I am committed to a studio practice that supports my ability to maintain this idea of resourcefulness by producing my own art materials composed of textile waste using methods of creative use. This allows me to respond to the materials at hand and perform acts of transformation and care with the intention to explore and observe what already exists in my environment.
My approach to practice led research involves the use of a studio space that serves as a lab of material explorations and development where I employ methods of improvisation and craft applications with obsolete and industrial sewing/textile machinery to create unexpected and emergent forms of cloth that can be further developed or investigated with. This approach has enabled to establish methods of making in the studio that extends far beyond the traditional understanding of the role of an artist/designer and of the positioning of applied art use in a contemporary art practice.
Overarching praxis statement:
" My work, research and practice is designed to (re)imagine a past — in the present — for the future." I am an artist who works with textile waste and the discarded. I am a designer who transforms waste, utilizes obsolete clothing and textile machinery and incorporates traditional artisanal techniques in response to the society we live in. I remix mending and artisanal handcraft applications with obsolete and digital technologies derived from my formal training in fashion, textiles and printmaking in order to innovate materials and produce unexpected forms.
Mending has always been apart of my vocabulary and way of thinking. It is both physically, philosophically and metaphorically embedded into every aspect of my research and practice. From the clothing I remade as a child to the salvaging of discarded textile manufacturing waste and obsolete machinery — I perform acts of visible mending to honour and transform the history of the craft, objects, tools and materials I use. As a trained designer in fashion and textiles my acquired knowledge and skill set enables me to improvise and collage together techniques and processes that allows me to push boundaries, make new discoveries and carve out a new language for materials and making in the 21st century. It is because of this, my practice in the field of textiles, fashion and contemporary art is liminally positioned between that of artist, designer, craftsperson, engineer, researcher, archeologist, alchemist, ecologist, DJ, entrepreneur, educator and keeper of the earth.
More about the artist:
www.katherinesoucie.com
www.sanssoucie.ca
www.thematerialrevolution.com