Aya Matsunaga is a Japanese textile artist who tempered her formal studies by moving to Nottingham, England and embracing the UK fibre art scene of the 1990s.
Aya Matsunaga is a Japanese textile artist who tempered her formal studies by moving to Nottingham, England, and embracing the UK fibre art scene of the 1990s.
In this lecture Aya will share her artistic journey—how, like white yarn in a dyebath, she absorbed influences and inspiration from her time in Japan, England, and Italy.
Her work is a synergy of knit and felted techniques. Aya Matsunaga knits with multiple dyed fine wool yarns—both by hand and also using a hand-cranked knitting machine. She completes the construction by fulling the fabric. The result is a very complex colour mixture that gives the work a distinctive artistic flavour. She has adapted this process to make unusual sculpted works and garments. Aya will showcase her work and relate it back to her journey—the challenges and successes of an independent working artist.