Editorial Summer 2003

Materiality: Substance and Sensibility

Since the Journal is always concerned with the material of textiles, why is this issue different from any other? A few months ago, Michele Fricke-her interview with Dennis Doordan starts on page 6-reported from the grapevine that "materiality" was about to emerge as "the next big thing." But what does it mean? And why should it become important at this particular time?

For once, the dictionary wasn't much help. "Materiality" is simply defined as "the state or quality of being material; physical substance." That seems to cover everything that occupies space. In Roget's Thesaurus, "materiality" has a premiere position-along with "bodiliness," it's on page 1, in 1.1, the first list of words under the heading, "Existence." That, too, seems all-encompassing.

"Material," a word often used generically in reference to fabric, is a given in textiles. The material qualities of fiber-e.g., the hand, the texture, the drape-are what draw people to it. In fact, we are sometimes faulted for our preoccupation with the "stuff" of our discipline.Can anything new be said about materiality in a cloth context?

We decided to interpret "materiality" as the assertive language of textiles. That is, we've considered thread and fabric not as passive recipients of process, but as active collaborators in determining forms they might take. While musing on how to explain this to readers, I happened to see My Architect, the film that explores the life and aesthetic ideas of Louis Kahn, the legendary architect. In a scene where Kahn is addressing a roomful of students at the Yale School of Architecture, he urges them to ask the brick what it wants. Apply that to fiber, and you have what this issue is about. Response to materials is what Dennis Doordan discusses in depth in answering Michele Fricke's questions. It's fundamental to Dorothy Gill Barnes's sensitivity to the tendencies of tree bark, or Polly Stirling's rapport with wool and silk that led to "nuno felt." For Wendy Lugg, it was the siren song of aging fabrics that inspired her to patch them together. Or, as in the case of Michael Olszewski, who put his signature treatment of cloth aside and turned to thread, one material may insist on its rightness for certain situations.

At the risk of redundancy, some articles are presented as complementary pairs. For example, Wendy Lugg's autobiographical piece brought an artist's perspective to Lois Martin's reflections on the patina of cloth. It also seemed that featuring not just one, but two innovative artists working in felt would highlight the volume of research that is expanding the range of the feltmaking process.

Many who attended or heard about Susan Brandeis's presentation at the last SDA conference asked to see it in print. Happily, an edited version of "Post-Digital Textiles: Rediscovering the Hand" was available for publication here. Brandeis leaves no doubt that fiber's materiality persistently beckons, despite -perhaps because of-competition from a virtual world. Patricia Malarcher.