Coming face to face with fabric art
Posting her first work with their fabrics on the collective’s website, a portrait of United States Vicepresident Kamala Harris, saw her receive all sorts of negative feedback on social media, but it did lead to her being asked to produce portraits of the fabric’s designer.
She often uses upholstery fabrics and people also give her fabric they no longer need.
‘‘I use all sorts of things unless I need to control it very carefully for a portrait to make the likeness real. Then I almost always use new.’’
As well as doing pieces for her own interest and to try out new techniques, Sneyd also takes commissions and submits her work to international challenges — a portrait of herself with her sisters and sistersinlaw received a jury award at a competition in Rochester New York.
‘‘A challenge can stimulate something, so off I go down a rabbit hole or my mother will nag me.’’
Before Christmas, Sneyd started experimenting creating fabric art on recycled clothing. She has appliqued her own jackets previously and lots of people admired them.
‘‘Because they are simpler and each one is different I can get through quite a few and its a nice break from the complicated stuff. Every now and again I just have to chill out and applique some tea towels or something.’’
But she draws the line at hemming clothes, sewing on buttons or dressmaking.
To most her fabric art and her career in epidemiology seem worlds apart, but Sneyd has come to realise they do have similarities.
‘‘It [work] was numbers and running research studies, but a lot of it was problem solving — looking for patterns in numbers, looking for ways disease behaves and things like that. It’s actually in a lot of ways numerical rather than visual.’’
Her family are very supportive. A brother is a big fan and created a website of her work for her birthday and her sister Catherine is a great help when opshopping or secondhand store shopping.
Sneyd has also become involved in the Otago Arts Society and is on its council. She has submitted a portrait of British conservationist David Attenborough with his clothes made from animalprint fabric and his face from birdprinted fabrics for the summer exhibition.
‘‘They’ve been really supportive as it is quite hard to get textile art recognised or shown in New Zealand. A lot of buyers don’t believe it is art.’’
She has found in general if a work is attached to a canvas or framed in a format people are familiar with then buyers are more likely to see it as art than if it is hung from a fabric sleeve even if it is the ‘‘exact same’’ work.
There are few people internationally who specialise in portraits, with most based in the United States.
‘‘They’re not very common around the world.’’