TRACY KENDALL

Tracy kendall work is inspired by a variety of sources. From found objects to being inspired by the interiors of houses in films. Tracy began her lecture by taking us through a background on how her career has followed on from specializing in screen printing to designing contemporary and experimental wall papers today.

She officially trained in Manchester where she specialised in screen printing before going to work as a technical support person at the Royal College for the textile department for 18 years which am sure did have a lot of influence on her experimental 3d wall paper she designed years later.

She is interested in experimenting with reflect as well as split screen. A lot of her inspiration comes from variety of sources. She gets inspiration from looking at pages in a magazine, photographs and looking at nature. Besides designing wall paper, she designs covers for lamp shades.

CUTLERY PRINT

One of the first piece of her work she showed us was her cutlery print wallpaper from the eat series. She also showed us her feather print wall paper both inspired and created from found objects around her. The feather wall paper was made from a piece of feather she found on the streets which she took and blew up to a large size with a photocopier in plain black and white. This process was also used for the idea of her floral series where a stem of a plant is taken and photocopied into plain black and white.

FEATHER PRINT

She believes design is using what you have to create what you need and making it work for you. This I really agree with. For most of my work, I like to find a piece of image and see how I can turn it around to create something new and alive. She also talked about the necessity of taking risk in design and not always playing safe. Though while taking risk, it is important as a designer to understand the target market.

STEM

For kendall, she puts up shows every now and then to help her understand her audience for a particular piece of work.

SEQUINS

The sequence was another set of wall paper she showed us which I thought was a very fresh idea. The sequence was a piece she did while studying on her M.A. this piece of work puts wall paper for me in a different zone. She treats wall paper more like a piece of textile material, cutting and weaving into them. The final piece results into a completely new work of art which leaves the user with not just a 2D surface but an interactive 3D surface.

Her strongest point for me in the lecture was when she talked about ideas. “Finding a simple idea and pushing it to its limit.”

SEQUINS

The lecture in whole was a bit boring and dragging for me but I was able to connect with the very important points and lessons to be learnt.