Hanging By A Thread Collaboration with Liz O'Connell.
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Recently David has been developing and building on his practice, which has ended up collaborating with glass created by Liz O'Connell. O’Connell completed her MA at the National Glass Glass centre she weaves with glass threads and creates glass textiles that explore our psychological connections to thread, such as: fixing and mending, the state of ‘losing one’s thread’, and being ‘threadbare’ .. she’s particularly interested in the selvedge ..how glass remains frayed. Her interest in our ‘ Emotional Fabric’ mainly comes from her experience working formerly as a family and single parent worker. Liz and David Fox are both interested in Heritage and through their research in Archives she’s met David Fox at Sunny Bank Mills and they have begun exploring the craft persons relationship with their process, rifling though notebooks and sample materials, at Sunny Bank and Bradford College Textile Archive. They begun blending two practices and to create woven pieces from notes and giant Glass bobbins at the National Glass Centre helped by mentors expertise using the lathe. David's weaving skills pushing forward both making processes, responding to Liz's glass and incorporating the glass into woven textiles.
'Hanging by a Thread' by David Fox and Liz O'Connell is a collaboration of their crafts in correspondence to these crafts being under threat and face uncertain futures. Liz and David have started to create a body of work from woven cloth with giant glass bobbins trapped in pleats, to glass woven into the cloth and a collection of tools made up of glass and parts of objects from the weaving process, wrapped and secured with yarn and rubber bands. These in response to detailed technical students notes at Bradford College Archive and a Warp Twister's handmade and collection of tools from Sunny Bank.
These works touch on pressure and erosion of heritage skills and the potential loss of knowledge. To them archives are a touchstone and invite conversations, exploration as well as memories for the public and themselves. The collaboration formed very naturally starting with the initial interest in the Warp Twister's Tools and Sunny Bank. Working together has encouraged both to experiment and push their own but each others practices further. They have found the joy in making through this uncertain time through working together, bouncing ideas and producing outcomes. They met with Anna Turzynski Curator of Sunny Bank Mills Gallery and she saw the importance and urgency within the work, and offered to have the work in Broken and Makeshift Exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills, in which they were delighted. The exhibition is on from the 11th of October till the 24th of December 2025, it features there developing work from there ongoing collaboration.
Technical Unravel on a Beam, 2025 is based on Edgar Creek a student from 1922-1926 at Bradford his detailed workbooks are in the College’s Textile Archive. We have combined glass by trapping it in a 3D woven cloth which glass has become a ‘back beam on a loom’ abstracting Edgar’s textile machinery diagrams, playing around with form and tension. The woven paper and cotton piece displays a peg plan from Edgar’s study of Pattern 1 which is a dissection of a small square of cloth. The glass bobbin is made on a lathe in Sunderland; National Glass Centre is unfortunately under immediate threat of closure.
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Indigo Ghost, 2025 is a glass woven piece carefully constructed and kiln fired woven glass threads. This piece is based on research into the history of Indigo (at that time it was locally grown woad) in Knaresborough which was a site of linen and flax weaving, based upon the River Nidd. All that remains of that are the beautiful buildings and mills which are now residential and the local historians who diligently gather information to remind the community of its local legacy.
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Intersection of the Wefts, 2025 is woven cloth is on a glass bobbin which represents warp yarns on a beam of a loom. The 3D woven pleats are ingeniously based on Creek’s cross section diagram of a plain weave which is when the warp and weft yarns go up and down creating a even cloth. It also explores our emotional tightness, our strength and robustness.
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David and Liz both were separately fascinated with A Warp Twister’s Tools and Tins from Sunny Bank Mills Museum and Archive from the 1960s. The tools were hooks and knives used for threading a loom. It was common for workers to create, pass down or purchase their own tools for the trade, the mill did not supply them. David has wrapped and dismantled loom parts to create new tools which are from the weaver who had his equipment before him. Liz has recreated glass weaving tools; some are robust others are objects of craft memory. This formed A Mill Workers Tools, 2025.
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Tensioned Uncertainty, 2025 their most recent glass/weave sculpture brings together the Twister’s Tools and Creek’s drawings of a Warp Dressing Machine diagram which features a threading hook, which they have deconstructed. The diagram is the process of the warp being put on the back beam before taken to the loom, hinting at knowledge but emotional tension.
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To be part of Broken and Makeshift is such a joy, they are both going to continue to develop and push there combined practise forward. They hope you get to see there work and that this blog sparks conversation in crafts, makers, art lovers. From their practice they encourage themselves and other to keep making, weaving, firing creating in whatever capacity. As we continue to create and inspire from our heritage we are showing the importance of knowledge, the archive and crafts.
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Links:
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Broken //Makeshift 11 October-24 December
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Broken // Makeshift - Sunny Bank Mills | Art Gallery & Business Space in Leeds
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Exhibition: ‘Hanging by a Thread’ | David Fox and Liz O’Connell » The Weave Shed
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