plastic fantastic: the sequel

 

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and now I’m finally doing it: no plastic bags will recycled here anymore. I’m keeping them all and making them into twine, which I’ll knit, weave or crochet into large thermal blankets, hammocks or new installation pieces. I'll also take inspiration from work produce and illustrated in this previous post. I'm having a bash at 'zero waste' and I’m not recycling anymore. I’m repurposing instead! 

What I’ll do with hard plastic food packaging need to be given some thought now. The house and studio meainwhile will start to fill with these specialty fashion twines. Pretty, but how I break the news to my partner is yet another matter!

memos to myself

Out with the old, in with the new! The New Year calls for a new brief, a new manifesto! There will  only be one set of rules for making my dailymades, it’ll be THE ONLY MANIFESTO…

ONLY take a day maximum to make something

- the clue is in the title of the series of works

ONLY use found, foraged or recycled materials

- be a producer not a consumer

ONLY use the most rudimentary tools

- hi tech is good, lo tech is better

ONLY work with cheap materials

- the value is in the making

ONLY make things once

- variation is better than repetition

ONLY make sense of things through repetition

- either that or improvisation

ONLY make things spontaneously

- a variation of the previous rule

ONLY record the making process in my head

- to make reproducing more revealing

ONLY reveal the art through criticism, not backed up by it

- this one is after Robert Benjamin

ONLY make work according to these rules

- like boundaries you've got to have them

ONLY stick to these rules until you decide to change them

- the only truly sensible way to work

notebook and glue
dailymade #130110

plaiting plastic fantastic

Plastic these days has a bad name, and for all the right reasons.  It doesn’t stop me loving it though; colour, strength and versatility are characteristics that attract me to these polluting synthetic polymers. Plastics could easily be my guilty pleasure if I didn’t keep a tight check on it. That said, I’ve been doing my bit for the environment this week by making use of old plastic bags for dailymades.  Inspired by my recent workshop at the Museum of London (see weave and wealth), I rekindled my passion not only for plastic but also plaiting.

plaited plastic bags
dailymade #121221

I all too often realise I’ve forgotten how to make something as I attempt to recreate it and therefore need to improvise which inevitably leads to different outcomes every time.  Necessity truly is the mother of invention! Allowing myself to forget is somewhat planned however, as the possibility of creating new everytime is is too good an opportunity to miss.

So, expect to see more variations of these woven items in days to come on dailymades as I’ll indulge myself over the festive season plaiting plastic fantastic!

plaited plastic bags
dailymade #121220

for more details on plaited baskets and projects
using recycled materials, see
Practical Basketry Techniques

make bindweed a bonus

for information on twining and other basketry techniques using hedgerow
and recycled materials, see Practical Basketry Techniques

I made a basket last week using bindweed, the parasitic plant that is the bane of gardeners. I had no idea what it would be like to weave with, but once stripped of its leaves, dried and soaked again, it proved ideal to work with. I posted what I made on dailymades and twitter and this prompted such interest from makers and gardeners alike, I collected more to experiment with.

The basket above drew inspiration from a twining project included Practical Basketry Techniques. I next use a bunch of coffee stirrers and bindweed to twine with, inspired by a recent 3D doodle also posted on dailymades.

Experimenting directly with the materials and allowing for their physical characteristics to determine the  shape and pattern of the objects I made was a real adventure. Seeing the Thomas Heatherwick show at the Victoria and Albert Museum at the time I was making these also framed my thinking. As written in the exhibition literature, Heatherwick Studio 'investigate the physical behaviour of materials and celebrate the creative potential of an action or a single moment'. Their ‘creative process becomes one of choosing rather than designing’. So, it is no longer a matter of ‘form over function’ or 'function over form', as material now also has to be thrown into the equation!  Hmmm...

Now for the science bit.  If you are interested in working with bindweed, here are a couple of essential tips:

1. Allow the bindweed to mellow for a day also before stripping the leaves.  The plant material will have softened by then reducing the amount of breakage as you strip. 

2. Coil the stems and allow to dry for 2/3 days before using.  Simply soak in water for a couple of hours before weaving.  NB: Using hot/warm water will reduce the soaking time and bring out the colour in the bindweed.

So, all that's left to say is best with your weeding and weaving...