A new material

As readers of my blog will know my passion is weaving, using materials that have a memory, are flexible and will endure the woven process so I can create geometric shapes as part of my sculptural art work. 

Recently a friend told me of another artist who was closing her studio after thirty years and would I be interested in a job lot of weaving material, she was selling everything to fund moving house. I had not previously used this material but wanted to help out a fellow artist, so said yes.

The material that arrived was not like any I had used before, it is made of a plastic substance that resembles willow in some way through the surface texture. I believe it was originally designed to be used for outdoor chairs and for creating woven seats in canoes. The material, being of a plastic composition, does not require any maintenance once woven and can be washed clean with soapy water, it doesn’t rot away so offers a long life span in the outdoors.

I have decided to put it through a test run and have begun weaving a sample sculpture so to speak, research showed that it could be softened by submerging it in warm water for an hour, so not too dissimilar to willow which needs soaking before use. 

Heres the results so far;