What is the focus of your lecture?
I've been working on collaborative work with neuroscientists, and I am looking into what it is about the woven translation of the face that adds an emotion or different quality to [my work]. I've also been working with brain imagery. They're called fiber tracts. I looked at Coptic faces from around 400 A.D. One is from Syria. I took these little 1-by-1-inch-sized faces, and I've woven a whole piece that has a lot of different expressions.
What is your method for creating textiles?
Right now I'm working with this very high-tech loom from Norway. I have a lot of ability to change things with more immediacy working with it. I'm drawing on family photographs. Then I create my own way of translation and my own structure in the way the threads go up and down. Then that's put into a different program that runs the loom. It does feed the information in, so when I press a pedal to weave, the right threads come across. Then I weave by hand. I'm making the image tactile and physical.
How did you begin working with textiles?
My interest in textiles began when I took a tour in Mexico, and I saw a lot of indigenous weaving and textile making. Then I studied textiles in Sweden, and I learned a lot of techniques and processes.
- Roxanne Turnbull
