Celia Pym on darning.

Celia Pym is an artist who has taken darning out of the domestic sphere and into galleries and museums. In this episode we chat about a career that has encompassed studying sculpture at Harvard via jobs in teaching and nursing – as well as a stint at the Royal College of Art – to being a finalist of the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize in 2018. 

One of the intriguing elements of Pym’s work is that she uses the process of darning and the objects that are brought to her to get to know people. As she told me in our discussion: ‘Early on I heard tons of stories about grief and I wasn’t sure if that was to do with me or the way I was asking the question… I realised it’s the damage that interested me sometimes more than the repair. I wondered if subconsciously I’d been communicating that. Instead of showing me a hole, I was saying show me the damage.’ Her story of how she started to repair her late great uncle’s jumper is genuinely emotional. 

You can find out more about Celia here: celiapym.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Material Matters, hosted by me, Grant Gibson. In each podcast, we'll be meeting a maker, designer, artist, or architect who is intrinsically linked to a particular material or technique, discovering how their crafts shape their lives and careers. In this latest episode, it's wonderful to be joined by the textile artist Celia Pym. Now I think it's safe to say that Celia has turned darning and small acts of repair into an art form, taking clothes that otherwise might be thrown away and giving them a new meaning. Her pieces are often centred around grief, loss, and tiny but symbolic acts of care. The artist has been shortlisted for the prestigious 2017 Loeve Craft Prize and the 2017 Women's Hour Craft Prize. Celia, thanks very much for inviting us into your studio. Thanks for having me. I mean, I'm intrigued particularly by uh Philip Philadelbarlow on the wall there. What is it about Phyllis' work that you have?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Well, I love I was actually reading about Philadelph's work yesterday, um, the folly catalogue from their um Venice Biennale last year. I love the readiness of her work and the sort of sense of thing, the ambiguity and the sense of things maybe falling apart a little, and yet they're super robust at the same time. That's always what I see in them. But the reason I've got that portrait on the wall um of her is because she's in her studio clothes, and I had the picture above of Agnes Martin before I had the picture of Villa de Barlow, and you can see they're both wearing blue jeans and a sort of blue top, and I love this idea that women in their studios wear blue jeans and blue tops and get messy. I don't know, I just they're both, yeah, like I and there you are. And I that wasn't on purpose, but I I mean I've loved Agnes Martin's work for a long time as well, and uh yeah, so it's an accidental that wall is just a slow accumulation of female artists sort of in their studio that I like.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Can we discuss your background? Yeah. How important were your family in getting you into textiles? I wonder.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Um my family are all, I would say more or less makers in some way or other. Certainly my immediate family. I grew up in a household with my parents and my siblings, and my great-aunt and great uncle, my grandparents, and next door was an aunt and uncle. So really. So there were nine of us in one house, and then an aunt and uncle next door, and some cousins up the road. And where was this? This was in Kent.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Well, actually, initially in North London and then in Kent. And um they all, you know, our house had things which I assumed everyone had, but I've come to learn that's not true. String drawers, endless tool kits for fixing things, stuff that didn't work, was available to figure out how to make it work again. They weren't, and they were my great uncle was a painter and he lived in the house, and his studio was in the house, so he was painting. You know, you saw his daily work happening. My great-aunt was an amazing gardener, there was a big garden that they looked after. They were all they knew about the natural world, but they also knew about making, and certainly they all could more or less knit. My mum's a good knitter, though she's very modest about it and says she's not. So it wasn't that they particularly encouraged me to do textiles, it was just part of the background of my life, I think, as a child. This making and doing and playing with materials.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Um do you remember the first time you picked up textiles and and started working?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Um I vaguely remember my mum making me a green mohair sweater when I was quite young. It was cardigan, and I think I was quite interested in this wool. I'm not sure if I knit on it or not, or if I just was really into that wool. And then I studied textiles when I was about 11 or 10 or something. You know, I had a class at school and I made it's funny, I really remember clearly the satisfaction of it. I made a little cross-stitch picture of a fox at night, and that really hit the I mean that's still a sensation I chased, that feeling of total completion on a piece of work. Um, yeah, so I think that was early engagement with textiles. I knit, I mean, people try to teach me to knit. I'm sort of a a fickle learner in that someone tells me something's a good idea to learn, and then I'm not convinced until I've decided it's a good idea to learn it. You know, so even the most uh reliable individual says, Oh, you'll love this, and I'm like, until I discover it for myself, I'm like, no, I'm not sure I will love this. So I know that I was taught to knit when I was little, but I didn't really pick it up again until I was 20, I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Because you've had this kind of extraordinary, fascinating, I mean genuinely eclective career.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

And I mean initially studying sculpture at Harvard. Yeah. I mean, what made you decide to do that and what did you learn there?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Well, first of all, the first story about that was that I decided to go to the States anyway. You know, I grew up in the UK. Right. My mum's American, my par my grandparents uh lived in Boston, where Harvard is, and I really was excited about the US. I really want to go there. So I went. And then I mean the funny thing about Harvard was that uh it's such an academic institution, and the art department's tiny. In my graduating class, I think there were maybe five other students in studio like me. So that's a class of 1800, five people who are doing studio arts. There were a lot more film-making students. What were you kind of making? Yeah, I'm trying to I'm trying to think how to tell you this. Um I was making I was working with really heavy materials. I loved sculpture because you don't start with your I just I took an intro to sculpture class and I adored it. I adored making plaster, I liked concrete, I liked welding, I liked big things. I liked things that were bigger than my body, and the sculpture department seems to do that, and three them, and it was material as well. Painting didn't take for me at all. Um why not? It was too flat. It was really, really I also didn't get it. I just didn't, you know, the tool of the brush didn't make sense to me, and we were I mean it was quite an experimental painting course that I remember doing. I did a couple painting courses, but it really wasn't I liked having my hands literally in a bucket of material and that felt really good to me. So having and plaster fascinated me, something that could set. So I was doing quite improvisational sort of work, um, building things in an hour, or making stuff that took the time of the material to set, or that I had the physical strength to build, or twice my height. So a lot of it was you know, I was interested in Bruce Nauman, then I was kind of interested in Eva Hess, and um I didn't know about Philodobalo then, but uh yeah, it was I was I was really interested in in making something that mirrored me somehow. I think that's what I liked about sculpture, and that was a big conversation. Scale So scale. Yeah, scale was always a big conversation in the sculpture department, it seemed like that was and actually when I applied to Royal College for my master's later, I'd been thinking about applying to sculpture there, and I went to see the sculpture department, and the only bit of feedback I got, this wasn't an interview just to go see them. They said, Oh, you're I showed them my portfolio, they said your work's too small for sculpture. And I thought, oh well, if you're not interested in me, then I'm not interested in you. I mean it wasn't entirely like that, but I was struck by that.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I mean, you left Harvard and obviously you ended up at the Royal College eventually, but in between you taught, right? Yes. What did you teach?

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Uh art and design at secondary school.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

In the UK?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah, in the UK. I had a friend who told me that life was going to be hard as an artist. She was a social worker. Actually, she wasn't at the time, but she is now. A good, you know, school friend, and she was like, Celia, this is crazy, you're never gonna make a living, you should become a teacher. And I don't know why I listened to her, but I'm glad I did. Um, I did a PGC in art and design, and I loved teaching. I knew I liked teaching. I like communicating, and teaching just looks like it's very hard work, but it also looks like play to me because you have this opportunity to engage with an idea or a material or a thing, and I'd loved school as well, so it made it's really funny. I've come to recognise as I've taught how different children's experiences of school can be and how just their attitude will inform how they approach learning. Um, but for me, when I was 23 and started teacher training, I felt very positive about school, secondary school in particular, being a teenager.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

And um Were you academic as a school child yourself?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. I loved maths, I liked um yeah, I was quite I was very academic actually, but I also really liked the arts. And what was nice about my family, if you're asking again, is they never saw a problem with that. There was never and they were very open, I don't know why, but uh shape yourself in whatever way you want was sort of their attitude. I was never it's really funny now, I was never asked what are you gonna be. That was never a question when I was a kid. Whereas I feel like all education is now asking students that, and it it makes me really sad because I don't think it's a very helpful question. Um because I don't think you you I think if you know what you like and what you love, that will help you figure it out. Maybe I'm being romantic, but so then you ended up at the Royal College. I ended up at the Royal College.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Why did you stop teaching?

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Um I think I don't know if you saw that show, but I did a show with Freddie Robbins in well, she chose me for a show called Knit Two Together in 2004 or five, I think. When I finished at Harvard, before I started teaching, I got a fellowship to knit a journey around Japan. So I'd I'd started knitting right at the end of my sculpture degree. And I don't know if I've spoken to you about this before, but um I really was struggling in the studio, so I was using knitting as a way to warm up because I remembered that I could knit and I was thinking, oh, what sort of time-based, slow activity would encourage me to get into the studio. Yeah, warm up mentally and physically, but it was actually like an inducement. Like if you've got a something to do when you get in the studio, I felt a bit calmer, so I started knitting just as this like warming up activity. And after three months of warming up, I realised I'd knit this huge pile of knitting which I hadn't really been paying attention to. I mean, if I'm honest, I think that some of the best things I make are when I'm not precisely looking straight at them. And in the studio I try and get at that a lot, but it's a really hard thing because if you think, if you do it too actively, like I'm trying to make this by product, like I'm not I'm concentrating on one thing, but I'm actually in the corner of my eye trying to keep an eye on that other thing that's happening I'm making, it's too self-conscious. Whereas if it genuinely just happened, it's like the back of embroidery or the back of work. If I I'm often very pleased with the back of work, lots of textile artists talk about that. I mean, it's a really common thing, but it's that sort of less less self-conscious, more accidental art. So I made this huge pile of knitting. I loved that it equaled the three months of time. I loved the length of it, the weight of it, the volume of it. And I um so I'd proposed to a fellowship that I would like to measure out a journey in a piece of knitting in Japan, a country I'd never been to before and didn't speak Japanese. And based I'd been interested in the laws of Haruki Murakami, so I sort of had Japan really vividly in my head that year. And they said, Yeah, alright, you can go. And the idea of this piece of work was that I would knit every day for nine months carrying wool and needles, and I would find wool in a place and knit it, and then move on to the next place. And the speed of the journey would be determined by the speed of my knitting. And I loved partly what I loved was that knitting needles are super portable, you know, you can just carry it as an art form, it's not so heavy, and that wool is available both in high-end stores and in local habadashery or craft stores. There is this sort of universal material, or not universal, but um ubiquitous, you can find it, it's not that hard to find yarn. And when someone from the British Council, I think, must have seen me in Japan because I was doing this live a lot of the time, outdoors, in public. I had a small show in Kyoto, and Freddie got wind of it. And when she was looking for work for that show, she somehow found me. I think it because it was early days of emails, and I had a hot mail account, and I had did have a business card that I'd taken with me to Japan. So I presume she must have. I've never actually asked her, I presume she must have got that card. And she invited me to be in the show knit two together, and it was the first show I'd ever been in that was located me in textiles, and I was really excited about it, but particularly I was excited about Freddie. I found her really um straightforward and interesting, and um I loved how ambitious she was for work, textile work, I loved her work, um, and she said she was one I was teaching full-time, you know, in secondary school, and she said, Hey, have you ever thought about coming to a master's at the Royal College? And actually I hadn't, that wasn't a way I was thinking. I was really, I think I was 26, and I was earning a living teaching. I I was holding on to a I had a studio at Beau Arts Trust. Um, but Freddie was super influential in encouraging me even to think about being in the textiles department, and that's why I applied for the RCA.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

So that's interesting. You hadn't thought of being in that textile department. No, not really. It was a bit of a kind of luck, really, in some regard.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

I think it was a huge amount of luck, though you know you could see that I was heading that way in a in a bit because I was I'd been doing these, I'd also been doing these thread pieces where I was like filling up space with thread, so I was like taking the height of my head and filling you th uh threading a line across a room so that it would create a ceiling that was just at my head height. I was doing lots of work with thread and yarn, so it it wasn't completely out of the blue to do textiles, but I think it I hadn't thought of being an expert or whatever that you know that I hadn't thought of being a specialist in textiles. I thought I was making sculpture and I hadn't imagined that the material and the the art and textiles could be the thing that shaped the work.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

So, how did your work develop at the Royal College?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Um initially I was completely um I was suit I was really excited about how good everyone was at making things. And I knew I was good at making things, but I didn't really and I knew I knew a lot about textiles actually, because I should say I did study weave as well when I was in secondary school. So God, I should have said that straight from the beginning. I did have this experience with weaving between 16 and 18 when I'd been weaving. So I knew about weave structures, but I'd always sort of, like I said, people telling me something is worth learning, and then I it takes me to with weaving, and it's like I did it just about right. I would say that's true of lots of the ways I work. Anyway, at Raw College the work developed. Let me think. I had to do a lot of technical stuff to start with, which threw me and I felt very confused, like digital embroidery, because I was on mixed media, and um and I I really wasn't sure how I fit in initially, actually. And it's a problem I see still with a lot of students that we get that the school can feel you can be a bit overawed by the level of skill with other students, the knitters on Dubier machines, the weavers on the jackard, um, and the sense of a hand skill and how it conveys its sophistication, or even it's not even about skill, ideas. So if an idea leads and then the material follows, I remember feeling a bit like, oh, I'm not sure that's the right place. But Freddie continued to encourage me, and lots of the tutors did, and they had a fantastic class. And in the beginning of my second year is when I started doing the mending work. I was gonna ask you about that.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

I'm glad you introduced it.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, I'm trying to so I didn't know how to answer your question about how the work developed. I mean, I can talk project through project, but mending came in sort of second year.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Well, let's talk about the the kind of the catalyst for your current work, if you will. Uh which is a jumper that belonged to your great uncle, I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, the painter.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Let's talk about let's talk about the jumper.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

So, um have you ever seen the jumper?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yes, I've seen photographs.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

So it's white and it's sort of big, like a big man's shape. It's hand knit, and he had died in 2000. Had he died? Yeah, he must have died. Sorry, I've suddenly lots of people have been dying recently in my you know, when you get it all confused.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Um it suddenly shook me, even just say that loud I how many years it's been. He had died. My dad, knowing that I like slightly lopsided, off, curious, maybe lumpy, damaged things. I'm not 100% sure what his instinct was, but I think it was because he he thought that is kind of Celia's thing. When they were clearing up my uncle's rooms, they found this sweater and it was heavily mended in the forearms. And he gave it to me. My dad gave it to me.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

What had he been doing?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Well, that was the thing. So he would he was 96 when he died, and he would sit in his armchair the last sort of four or five years of his life with a board across the arms of the armchair, and he would just lean forward very heavily drawing. So uh dad gives me the sweater. I'm in love with it for lots of reasons, but two the two main ones were that I could see very distinctly in all that wear and tear, the movements of his body, so that action of sitting, leaning forward and drawing. I thought that's a really interesting idea that the garment holds something of a person, I mean, literally holds the body actions of a person. There's evidence in there. And then the other thing that really caught my attention was my aunt's mending because it had been repaired. It was so ready, you know, it was so like fast and just kind of um I don't know if you've do you has anyone mended your things in your life? Or do you mend it?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

No, not really, no, I don't know. I don't, much to my chagrin.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Okay, well, it's some p sometimes it's super immaculate and perfect, but what I know, you know, it sits really level and flat with the surface of the cloth, it blends in really beautifully. Obviously, you know, a hundred years ago children were being taught to do it invisibly, that was your goal. But my aunt's mending what cracked me up was it it was just like bits of yarn. It was all white, but they were different coloured whites, and then there's this funny little knitted patch that looks like a blister, and then and I could totally I loved that it was all small moments of repair, so it was just this constant attention to his sweater, but I also just loved how it was slightly it was practical and unself-conscious, but kind as well. You know, there was a sort of kindness to her, and I also the thing that was really moving was that she had pre- or for me, she'd died before him, and so there were all these new holes that hadn't been tended to, and I was I was suddenly, you know, those things just catch all of a sudden where you think oh, we didn't notice that was being neglected. Like the you don't recognise what the absence, what death will what what hole it will leave exactly. You think you might know, but you don't, and those little untended to holes really uh seemed like something to me. So that's that was the catalyst, that sweater, this idea of evidence the body being visible in a garment, the slow wear of time as well, because these holes only appear gradually, and then that that um you know the broomstick and the broom handle, like the sleeves were almost entirely repair. And I was like, when was the moment it tipped from being original into repair?

SPEAKER_01 19:57

So uh for the listeners who might not have seen the the finished piece, well, what did you do?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

So I added blue into it. Um it's it's got like these white patches, and then it's just got these extra bits of blue into it um that uh spread um up the sleeve.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

I mean I've seen you describe your repairs as unapologetic.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

And um what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

I was uh what do I mean by that? I guess if you think that um I'm a I'm a terrible one for saying sorry in life, but in work I don't really say sorry. You know, I bump into people on it's an English habit. You bump into someone on a bus or get to open the door or you whatever. I you know I say sorry all the time. I'm I before I've done something wrong, I will say sorry a lot of the time. And yet what I like in my work is I I never feel that compulsion. I find what I love about creative life and studio life is it's totally free. I can do and be however I want to be in here. So the unapologetic nature of the darning, I think it's that the damage is there and there's no need to feel sorry about it. In fact, it's kind of a great thing for me anyway, and repairing it that's repairing it is not um maybe it yeah, repairing it is makes sense. So it's not a sorry, you know, there's nothing regretful about it.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

I mean it seems to me that what your work has done is it started in this very personal way, but it's kind of broadened out. And I read a quote from you saying that, and I'll kind of paraphrase if you like, that investigating holes uh brings you into contact with people. And I'm wondering how that how does it do that?

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Well, you know, if you think about that Japan trip whereas outdoors knitting, I'm super i interested in others, and I think a lot of the time I'm looking for ways to meet other people. So when I started darning, so I did my uncle's sweater, I'm ended it. You know, I'm in my second year of my RCA building up to, you know, sort of trying to. pull the work together and I thought, well if I'm interested in holes I better see holes like real holes. If I'm interested in damage I should be looking for it. And I held this small exhibition where I invited members of the college to bring me things to wear. I mean bring me things to dawn and uh it was so funny because the first day the gallery's empty with nothing there to repair and then slowly people started bringing things. I was like oh this is great I'm meeting all these people that I wouldn't otherwise meet and also we're talking so they would show me this was my first foray into it they'd show me their tights or their elbow hole or whatever and um I'd find we were talking quite intimately and quite personally without as complete strangers. It's a bit like going to see a doctor you sort of you imagine them in a role so like I'm the mender and I get I'm I'm working as a professional mender even though I feel deeply unprofessional I did at the time and people talk to you. So it's a lovely way to I mean it's an interesting invitation show me something that you own with a hole in it.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah so because what does repair mean to people psychologically? What kind of stories were you hearing?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Well I was hearing a lot about um I mean it's changed sort of I think as but early on I s I heard tons of stories about grief and I wasn't sure if that was to do with me or the way I was asking the question or if the question just invites that but I think it was like people heard repair and thought maybe there's something that needs looking after. You know there's something and actually I did a show much later called What Do I Need to Do to Make It Okay and they framed a conference and they called it something like Damage and repair and I realized that actually it's the damage that interests me sometimes more than the repair. And I wondered if unconsciously I'd been communicating that early on you know instead of show me a hole I was saying show me the damage I like a sad story.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Freddie teases me that the sadder the better well I mean I I linking neatly I think that you went from the Royal college talking about damage you went from to train as a nurse. Yeah. Which is fascinating why why did you decide to do that?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Well I've been working for a few years um do you know any nurses?

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Well my whole family are from they're all they're in medicine aren't they? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Okay so you know that um I had worked as a nurse in my early twenties care assistant actually sort of to earn money and stuff and I'd loved it. And then I don't know if you can see the link or if I've made it clear but the body and the care was clearly developing as interest in this textile work but I was also struggling to cut my way as an artist. I was un it wasn't a lack of confidence exactly I just wasn't sure about how I fit in the world what the work's going to do and I actually thought nursing would be a really solid job that would be an anchor and then I'd have the studio at the same time and I also felt strongly that nursing would teach me things about care that I was trying to get at so yeah I went and I did uh at King's College London and I worked at St Mary's for two years more or less St Mary's Hospital crazy hospital I mean something that was it still in the back of your head that you wanted to be an artist? Definitely and I think weirdly doing although it's quite a struggle doing the nursing training was this odd flip sided confirmation that I was more of an artist than a nurse although I loved nursing I was I don't think I was bad at it certainly safe and I was able to look after people but um as I was doing it more and more I started to feel like this isn't right you should be being an artist what are you doing and I left rather dramatically just I just one day said I can't do this anymore. This is wrong I'm doing I'm leading the wrong life I should be being an artist much to well the only person no actually my family were pretty supported they were a bit confused friends were confused and then some friends were really relieved they said oh thank god I really it was really important that you were an artist I was so worried that you're going into nursing I mean nursing is a tough life I mean financially being an artist is arguably sometimes probably harder um yeah uh was it difficult to to leave relative security to to do something that is that isn't security I mean the the security of nursing and a paycheck in terms of paycheck yeah yeah it was it was terrifying it was absolutely terrifying and weirdly I think it was really good really really good because it meant I had to give more to work you know the the fear it was like well you you have to make this work I mean teaching still sustains me financially of course but also um from a work perspective I love teaching and I just it was a I returned to making with a different commitment I think after I finished nursing.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

I mean can I ask a bit about how important when you're doing what you're doing where you can think about a market who's gonna buy this who's gonna commission me I'm hopeless I am beyond hopeless uh no I'm almost never thinking about a market um I feel like it it's not that I'm a chance set but I dwell in some middle ground of great confidence and deep insecurity which many artists do I think where I um I'm excited to get shows the work seems to be selling people seem interested in the ideas when the work sells it sells to private collectors or into museums or private collectors right uh this year I had a commission with a museum that was amazing to work with their archive and actually archives are quite an appealing this was the Nouveau Museum Nacional de Monaco so they commissioned me we've been working together for about three years and they'd just what I loved is they'd heard about me they'd seen a piece of work in a show and they invited me over really speculatively because they had a problem with the damaged costumes in their collection and they just didn't know what to do about it. So the first invitation was what would what do you think what's your response to this collection and um and then it built we did one project together and then this year they commissioned this flying gold cake project which was amazing where I mended one of their costumes and they were totally free with letting me take it out for people to wear because I was thinking again about meeting people there are things that dwell in archives that are never going to get an outing that just going to sit in an archive and in fact they'll just disintegrate more. They'll never even probably go on show because they're the poor example of what is already in the collection and since I know that I can keep mending something I was I said look if it gets damaged I'll just mend it again. I'll just keep mending it and I thought yeah so we took this cape on the road for people to wear and perform in and it's a pretty magical object and so it was really easy. It was just like the simplest thing in the world you show up with a gold cape and some music and people dance and sing and wear it whether they're children or adults with dementia or you know it was important to me that we did it with lots of different groups and um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

I mean the interesting about about what you do Celia is it seems to me that it doesn't seem to matter what garment you I mean I've seen you work on natural jumpers but also tracksuits and synthetics.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Yeah I mean the tracksuits I think confuse people because actually the tracksuits have been had holes cut in them which are my way of um but I love the tracksuit because it doesn't unravel when you cut it and I love the way it bumps up a little bit but I also like the the sort of unsportiness of a hole in a tracksuit. I mean the tracksuits came about from sports socks which came about from the Cultural Olympiad when I was employed to um do some projects in Stratford for the Olympics and I my idea was that that I was going to train an army of darners ready at the sidelines of the you know what the track to darn Jess Ennis Hill's shorts or whatever. Yeah when it was sort of stupid and sort of serious at the same time you know if we live in Stratford how can we be useful to the Olympics beyond being cheerleaders and so that was how I started on the sort of sports wear. But yeah most materials I'm interested in I realise I like wool a bit better or but cottons and silks I'm happy to look at uh and do. I think I like wool because I'm a bit heavier with wool it can fit nicer in my hands. It's also quicker.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Our time is nearly up yep so um kind of final question really about kind of future aspirations where do you see your work going? Where can you take it?

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Well I've become obsessed with tapestry I did some tapestry this summer and um I mean this is what's on the wall at the moment and towels old towels. I got this thing at the moment about old towels used towels and old blankets and trying to integrate them with tapestry. I'm really keen to make some really big things just physically big objects that grow and grow and grow and slightly take over the studio.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Well that's a wonderful place to leave it. Celia Pym thank you very much thanks Grand