Hello, I'm Sian. I'm a multimedia artist and a mature student in the final year of a BA in Fine Art. My work moves between textile, photography, video, ceramics and performance, and I swing between two modes: research and making. Some days I can spend hours reading, thinking and looking. On other days I'm just playing with material, working with my hands and letting the work lead.
How it started
I started rug making four years ago, when I needed a rug for my final Art Foundation installation. I bought a tufting gun, built a frame in my garage, and then taught myself through a lot of trial and error. Once the project was done, I kept going back to the frame in my spare time, learning new techniques, going bigger, and figuring out how to get cleaner edges, sharper lines and better texture.
Art you can live with
Part of what keeps me coming back is that I'm a fan of design and the domestic, of things with a function. A rug is something you stand on, sit next to and walk around every day, and that's what I wanted to bring to Flõwan: pieces that are properly functional but still made with the care of an artwork.
Where a piece goes can change everything. On the floor, a rug becomes part of the room and the way you move through it. On a wall, the same piece turns into an image, something that's gazed at and held in higher regard. When I'm making something for a specific person and a specific space, floor or wall, I'm thinking about the light, the scale and how the piece will change the feel of the room. The same design can look completely different depending on where it lives.
Working from my garage
My tufting frame in the garage became even more important a few years ago, during a period of ill health when I had to take time out of uni. Tufting meant I could keep making from home, at my own pace, without needing to be anywhere or be anyone other than who I was that day. I could work for an hour or a whole afternoon, follow an idea, pull it out and start again. It kept me connected to some form of practice when I couldn't be in the studio.
I also find the making very meditative. It quiets my overactive mind.
Painting with wool
I don't paint. I think I have a fear of the canvas edges. But tufting feels like painting to me. Wool is my paint, and I love working with it. There's so much range within the material, from soft, chunky yarns to dense, tightly twisted ones, and from muted naturals to saturated colours. Every yarn behaves differently with the gun and with my hand poke, and they build and hang differently too. I also love using a small electric hand shaver to carve into the pile for shadow and contrast. It's not the most economical way of levelling your pile, but it's the most interesting for the outcome. I guess it's as immediate as drawing and as slow as painting, but with a texture you can't get from either.
I love working big too. A huge blank frame feels like an open invitation: all that space and freedom. I get to use my whole body, standing over it and moving around it, and I think you can feel that in the finished piece.
How long things take
How long a piece takes depends on what it is. A small, simple rug can take me 3 days. A big, detailed one with lots of colour changes and carving can take up to 6 weeks. The hand shaving isn't the quickest way to shave a rug, but the carving is the interesting part for me, and I think it creates a much more interesting rug too.
So that's Flõwan
If you've got this far, you'll have gathered that Flõwan is a bit of everything: the research, the trial and error, my love of wool, and my belief that art can be something you live with functionally. I handmake every piece, and each one holds a little of all that!
Looking for a rug for the floor or a wall commission? Browse the shop or email me sian@flowanstudio.com to chat.