Arabel Rosillo de Blas | Modern Lace

Adventures in Time & Lace

Welcome to Adventures in Time & Lace! Once a month I’ll be here to explore the vast traditions and techniques of lacemaking, as well as look at inspiring ways in which lacework is being used in contemporary art and craft.

For my first post I thought I’d start by featuring an artist and lacework installation that I found very inspiring and that reignited my own interest in lacemaking – visual artist Arabel Rosillo De Blas Lace In Place.

Lace In Place was commissioned in 2012 by Bedford Creative Arts and the resulting work emerged as 14 large scale lace panels that adorned the exterior of a derelict Grade 2 listed building in the middle of Bedford town centre. From the BCA website: “The work evokes a sense of loss, not only for the art of lace making itself, but also for the building. Once elegant and opulent, it now lies derelict, in a state of gradual decay.” I enjoyed the way this installation brought attention to the often forgotten tradition of Bedfordshire lacemaking by displaying it on a building right in the town centre for everyone to see.

 

Lace In Place - Arabel Rosillo De Blas
Lace In Place – Arabel Rosillo De Blas. Photo Credit: Richard Davies.

I was interested in how Arabel had taken the intricacies of delicate Bedfordshire lace traditionally made in fine cotton and scaled this up in her piece, making lace on a much larger scale using three miles of nylon rope. Here’s part of Arabel’s artist statement:

“A visual artist whose sculpture and site-specific interventions function as social commentary…Most of her site-specific large scale installations are made through a collaborative process, rooted in a socially-engaged practice. The place and the people involved in each project become the context, and the exchange of skills and knowledge intrinsic to the work.” – Arabel Rosillo de Blas

Arabel worked with the local group the Aragon Lacemakers and a group of local people to create the large lace panels. In this way, the installation invoked a new modern day version of the local cottage lacemaking industry by bringing together a group of people to work on the lace panels together.  The image below explores this amazing work – visually showing it all in all its glory.

Lace In Place - Arabel Rosillo de Blas - Panels
Photo Credit: Arabel Rosillo de Blas

Bedfordshire lace is distinguished, amongst other ways, by its ‘leaf’ or ‘tally’ motif. This was developed as an act of defiance as it could not be replicated in the machine made lace that came to threaten this handmade craft. Arabel incorporated this and other stitches specific to Bedfordshire lace into the lace panels. From a distance the 14 panels looked uniform but if you looked closer you could see the subtle differences that individual lacemakers had brought to the work, demonstrating the unique, handmade nature that Bedfordshire lacemakers were and are very proud of.

Lace In Place - Arabel Rosillo de Blas - Panel Detail
Photo Credit: Arabel Rosillo de Blas

Lace In Place led Arabel to create two other multimedia art works. Laced Words was an audiovisual piece in collaboration with audio visiual artist Kathy Hinde, involving ‘lacing’ a building in light and sound.  What an amazing image, showing the light marks with the beautiful lace forms; thus the lace can be appreciated day or night.  Brilliant for those living near it I am sure!

Laced Words - Arabel Rosillo de Blas
Photo Credit: Arabel Rosillo de Blas

Large Lace was a performance piece allowing the art of lacemaking to come alive, with people becoming the lace bobbins and the pins creating giant lacework in a choreographed way. I can’t think of a better way for people to be able to physically understand and experience what lacemaking is all about.  It is a way of keeping this marvellous method of creating art alive.

Laced Words - Arabel Rosillo de Blas
Photo Credit: Arabel Rosillo de Blas

If you’d like to find out more about Arabel’s work as a visual artist and for more detail on Lace In Place, Laced Words and Large Lace do check out her website. You can also find out how Lace In Place was received in Bedford on the Bedford Creative Arts website.

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