Alice Fox
Alice Fox
Alice Fox is a British artist who graduated with a 1st
BA (Hons) in Contemporary Surface Design and Textiles from the Bradford School
of Arts and Media. She completed this course between 2006 and 2011, however had
previously graduated in 1997 from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne with a
2:1 BSc (Hons) in Geography. Since 2011, Fox has been a member of the Society
of Designer Craftsmen and in 2014, she won the silver award for Craft and
Design Selected Maker Awards. Since 2014, she has been a member of the Textile
Study Group and again in 2015 was a finalist for the Craft and Design Selected
Maker Awards.
Alice Fox thinks of her work as a “personal engagement with
landscape” as she tries to convey a celebration and experience of how she
interacts with the natural world. Fox mostly focuses on coastal areas however
as the beach and the surrounding area is perfect for experience and discovery.
The natural cycles that encompass the beach, such as the extreme weather and
the rolling of the tides, allows treasure and rubbish to be dispersed across
the environment which creates an area for visual and physical adventure. To
plan her work, Alice Fox will explore and discover while recording words,
sketches and photographs as well as collecting items that define her personal
experience of that journey. While searching her surroundings, Fox will notice
line, pattern, shape and texture. She will also try to represent the small
changes she sees, like the way material is moved by the elements. Fox uses the
objects she collects as a “tangible link to the places [she’s] walked”.
Alice Fox makes her textile artwork by combining natural
fibres and gathered materials. She uses natural dye techniques, print, stitch
and weave in a variety of ways to create surfaces and structures. The focus of
Fox’s response to the landscape is her found objects as she is fascinated by
the mystery and simplicity they have after being affected by the elements and
causing them to lose their identity. Once the found objects have been
collected, Alice Fox will engage with the materials and then manipulate and
experiment with them until she has a better understanding of their properties,
boundaries and possibilities. She explains how she uses “found items to make
marks, allowing them to stain the fibres and stitches that [she] surrounds them
with. This becomes a collaboration between object and artist”. The main idea
behind Alice Fox’s work is sustainability. She uses her knowledge from her
background in geography and nature conservation to help develop her creations.