Textiles

professor: Tatána Šteiglová

“Softness is Life”—Magdalena Abakanowicz
Textiles are the first and last materials with which a person comes in contact. The history of textiles has been unwinding, together with ceramics and other disciplines, since prehistoric times. Textiles were a means of the process of a person’s self-awareness and development and at the same time serve as testimony to the history of mankind in all of its ages. Textiles have a relationship to man as clothing, as a second skin and as his other container in architecture. Their function in the life of a person is irreplaceable. The qualities of textiles predetermine them to specific artistic expression—both in the area of applied art as well as one’s own artistic expression. The transformation of the relationship towards permanence in artistic work has discovered soft materials including textiles, which have remained for the artist an expression of their conceptions, of their relationship to themself and to the world. Textiles artists, for whom textiles are a natural material of their self-expression, and others have discovered in textiles a medium for their testimony. In addition to the physical properties of textiles, they have significant symbolic values, linked to magic rituals, nature, and the history of mankind. Textiles have specific tactile and optical values. Textiles are soft, light, elastic, translucent, flowing, thin or strong, glossy or matte, smooth or rough. They can be stretched, hung, wadded, gathered, folded, or turned back. You pad, layer, cut or wrap them, or let them wave in the wind. All with absolute freedom of artistic expression. Textiles are communication. All of these are reasons to be interested in textiles and to inspire an interest in them as a means of extending one’s personality and creative expression, both for students at the Art Education Department, and in their environment, and at basic schools, middle schools, and special art schools.