Associations and inspirations

I got a new umbrella – nothing special, its even a cheap example, but each time I get the umbrella in the corner of my eye (it has to be just a gleam) I experience a sudden desire for a glass of cold, sweat, creamy coffee. How strange is that?!
After a couple of coffee brakes, while driving my car with the umbrella sticking under my bag on the front passenger seat, I understood that my eyes had registered something I consciously didn’t realize: the pattern of the umbrella textile had some kind of resemblance with a particular coffee package. The signals between the pattern and my feeling of coffee-thirst were instant that they either went strait through my brain, or somehow managed to avoid the places where my thinking was situated. The visual information went directly to my stomach. Other times it can be a different kind of "unconscious information" that initiates associations, or inspirations.

In her presentation on EECERA- conference in Stavanger (September 2008), Hillevi Lanz Taguchi showed an example of a child’s play with clay, and mentioned how the material “communicated with the child”. I believe that materials can “speak back” - they give resistance and offer a variety of qualities. I know they do – I’ve experienced that many times.

Here is an example of a textile that gave me associations to old letters, envelopes, stamps… The textile has inspired the details for two garments I made. The process of making required precision, and challenged my “aesthetic attention” in making choices of additional materials: I even used some string because of its origin, colour and associations to binding a parcel. before posting.