This week I presented my typology domain work which took the form of mapped imagery

It helped me look at the bigger picture and really dragged out of me why and what I am here to make and what has held me back. When I think about the typologies I’m interested in and the domains my work sits in its helps to understand the context of my practice and why I make work and also what’s stopped me in the past. It’s been a really useful exercise for me because it’s made me visually and logically express things I’d known but hadn’t communicated about how and why and what I want to make. I’ll use the document I created as an ongoing place collate inspiration and data. 

I spent 8 years designing and making things as a set designer that I kind of liked, in a very high paced, wasteful industry. A domain within design and fashion that sometimes typified toxicity -  where ‘trends’ and creative output move lightening quick, with things and people often seeming throw away. 

Ultimately it made me quite unwell   I felt a certain paralysis with creating -  both not feeling good about myself but also not feeling comfortable with the impact on the environment and other people. Which was a catch 22 as for me creating is how I feel whole and soothed and also how I earned money. 

I realised there were a few things I need as a base line in in order to become unparalysed creatively and one of those was to shift domain to contemporary circular design - making things that are conscious had an intended life beyond a single photo or film. 

Other things also become important and helped define my direction - I want to not harm the environment and if I can utilising waste. I need to use colour and make joyful work. I want to use my hands as this is therapeutic for me. This year I’ve been exploring quite simply how those things can be brought together in my practice to also help other people feel better too.  

There are others whose work I’ve highlighted who work in what I coined a ‘joyfully sustained’ way. I go into in more detail in this blog... and within my thesis I delve a little deeper again into the care and kindness that is evidenced as an emergent trend in contemporary design. 

There are several thought leaders in London and the UK who I admire. From circular design writer Katie Treggiden, to Agencies like RELAY and  wood society of arts, and MAH gallery.

Along with the more typical ‘industry domain’ There is also social media, and Instagram has undoubtedly changed the global design domain in terms of accessibility, curation and autonomy.

I actually use Instagram to create and add to my typologies collections and aggregate my own visual references, the different criteria for my sorting you can see here.

I’m drawn to what I call soothing art and design. Which often has organic and abstract sensibilities aswell as inviting movement and playfulness. Artists have been working in this soft organic and abstract way for a long time, where abstraction historically was linked to spirituality, non dualism and often communal social ideas and a more instinctive way of creating work, which I’m also exploring and intrigued by.

Soothing objects - typologies

Through interview and research I have been collecting and collating different objects, actions and traditions that soothe. 

I’ve split then into different areas shown here, each in their own way forming a domain of its own. From soothing art, to soothing reality

to soothing actions,

to soothing objects

To my own soothing practice

I began to categorise from the spiritual to the vernacular, to the industrial to fine art, to low art and attempted to communicate the cross over and emergent trends or findings.

I also created a questionnaire which gave me feedback from other people about how they soothe themselves and the objects they use to help themselves feel calm or centred day to day. 

This information has been really interesting in helping me consider how and with what people find calm,  and the intentions they choose the objects they use.  I was able to pull out key words, object and also actions which will help inspire my making going forward. It was interesting to note that actions were supported by objects and how I perhaps can find inspiration in how something will or can be used to fulfil these. 

I feel through this exercise I was able to visually map out my inspiration and context and its now allowing me to draw links and interconnectivity between areas I hadn’t noticed. 

Another section I began to expand into was on mapping sustainability - looking at not  just material but production and form - looking into mono-materiality  and glueless binding techniques.