Weaving a connection between art and commerce
Something strange is happening at the new Aesop store. At first glance, it looks like an industrial spill, except the substance being spewed out of the brick wall is a solid. Or perhaps a serving of fettuccine piled up on the floor for a giant?
Whatever it is, “it’s got volume,” says Toronto artist Kathryn Walter, the author of this event, which Aesop calls “an installation about materiality and form.
“I like the relationship with the bricks and mortar. It’s fun to think of it oozing out of the brick.”
Walter’s deft hand with industrial felt, which is much in demand with architects and designers across North America, is already on permanent display at the newly opened Aesop, where, in collaboration with Toronto-based Superkul architects who designed the store’s industrialchic interior, Walter has created an elegant, rippling panel of pleated oat-coloured felt that rolls up one wall and onto the ceiling.
The newly installed felt spill, however, which was created from some 2,256 feet of remnants, is more in the line of a temporary intervention — one devised for next week’s Toronto Design Offsite Festival (TO DO), a weeklong event which aims to bring design out of the atelier and into the city streets.
“I like to walk that line between art and design,” says Walter, who will also be introducing a collaboration called “dittybag” (dittybag.ca) with a talk and a film she has created for the fest this weekend at the Comrags store. “TO DO off-site offers an opportunity to do something more experimental.” (Not to mention local: not only are Walter’s installations designed and built here, the felt material used is from a local supplier).
All of it speaks to an increasingly tighter-knit weave between art and commerce. One might think that a retailer might balk at the prospect of a pile of felt poured onto the middle of their shop floor, but not, apparently, a new breed of retailer like the global skin care line Aesop.
“Kathryn’s installations create a connection between our store and the textile history of the area,” says Stuart Millar, Aesop’s general manager and president of the Americas. “Soft and warm, the felt creates an unexpected buffer against the bustle of the street and defines our space as a place of respite.”
Walter, a graduate of Emily Carr College of Art and Design, the school named after the artist whose great-grandfather was an importer of felt back in the 19th century, ended up doing a project for the Textile Museum of Canada in 2002 on the material history of Beaver hats that first got her thinking about the possibilities of the material.
“Felt is warm and organic, but it’s also got this body and dimension,” says Walter, who now feels she is “riding a wave” of interest in the material.
“It’s a very 19th-century material. It’s pressed wool, not woven; it’s a sheet good that comes in roll stock, like steel. But it’s also the natural, undyed colour of the sheep it came from.”
For more info on the upcoming events and exhibitions, go to todesignoffsite.com. Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. Contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.