Threads of Desire. by Ildiko Scurr
When I was 14 years old, I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer. I loved drawing, painting and creating structures since being a young child. My Godmother was a fashion designer and she made it sound so exciting and trendy. I did a Foundation Course in Design at Chelsea College of Art and when it came to the fashion module I suddenly realised I couldn ' t bear imagining a future career with the type of egotistical, neurotic, compulsive people it attracted! I had my first major wake up call. I had to choose what to specialise in and suddenly it wasn ' t going to be fashion!
My great grandmother had lived in a village in Hungary and spun her own flax and wove her own towels and bed linen. She embroidered every piece beautifully as all women did in her village in her day. I was drawn to follow in her footsteps and so I ended up with a Degree in Woven Textiles at Huddersfield University. I studied how to design, plot out and turn ideas into woven cloth and how to spin, dye and finish yarn. I loved it! I was often to be found with my long hair pinned up, in ripped jeans, threading up my loom with fine hand-dyed yarn. Part of my course I spent in France in a textile company, learning how to create commercial designs for furnishing fabrics. All the top furnishing fabric companies came to have their designs turned into cloth at Usine de Gratry Lorthios in Lille, including Osbourne & Little and Romo Fabrics. There I learned to be a professional. At my final degree show, when I looked at all the rich and colourful fabric I had created, I felt a huge sense of achievement.
Due to the economic factors at the time in the UK I never made a career from textile design. But nowadays I need to express my creativity in many ways. I love to draw and enjoy going out with a sketch pad. I often sit by the sea and draw my impressions of the water and the land and how they interact. I am fascinated by reflections and I like to use another form of media; my camera. I always have it on me. My eye is oriented towards patterns in nature and I find that reflections show us echoes of our environment, often repeated and distorted in intriguing ways.
My creative endeavours also cover music. I have sung in choirs for years, starting in school. But I branched out into solo singing and writing my own songs, a joy I discovered when I learned to play guitar 5 years ago. My dream is to gather some musicians and do some gigs locally. Maybe it will happen next year...
Creativity influences the way I resolve problems, express myself, relax and respond to life. I also love other creative people; creatives seem to communicate in a particular way, often no words are needed. We notice textures, colours, the juxtaposition of objects and most of all how things make us feel. Without creativity, my life would be very dull indeed … now … where did I put that sketchpad?!
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Photography by Ildiko Scurr.