For this collaboration project I have chosen to work with my sister, Mimi Braddell, she is a multi-media fine artist who, for the last few years has been specialising in textile work. Creating in-depth pictorial quilts, her practice involves a rich process of naturally dying all the fabrics used to create the quilts, often sourcing the dying materials herself, and hand sewing large portions of the quilts, making for an ethically and environmentally conscious practice.
My sister’s work has always inspired me, from a young age she has been my creative influence and because of this I feel very enthusiastic to collaborate with her.
Below are some of her recent textile works:
Link to her Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mimirose_art?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
The reason I chose to collaborate with Mimi is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, we have been wanting to create a piece of collaborative work together for a while now, as she graduated last year and has since been eager to keep producing work, I have also been wanting to make visual work again. Secondly, both Mimi and myself have been wanting to explore more around animation, herself the illustrative aspects and myself, the digital-visual and sonic aspects. Therefore we thought this shared inspiration would feed excellently into a combined project, dedicating certain roles to one another to ensure we both explore the elements that interest us.
When it came to the theme of our project, we wanted to delve into an area that is unique to this sibling collaboration, something that only we share with one another, consequently we thought heritage would be very fitting. The lineage that my sister and I share is specially unique to us, there is no one else in the world who shares the specific family ancestry as us. We also thought, as we know we want to continue this work beyond this project, that delving into the theme of heritage gives us huge potentials in creating a series of work. With each line of our ancestry, we aim to create an animation piece exploring one specific culture and history.
In regards to the communication element of this project, I feel confident that my sister and I are able to share our honest opinions with each other, making our individual creative choices open and explorative. Because of the sibling relationship, I don’t feel nervous to confront her or be truthful about what doesn’t work for me, and vice versa. This is definitely something I have found harder in the past, as when working in a group I often used to keep my thoughts quiet in risk of coming across as too controlling. Because of this I have definitely preferred to work independently rather than with others, although I now recognise the strengths that come with working collaboratively.
However, I will say, in the last 2 years I feel I have grown a lot more confidence in defending my beliefs and expressing my opinions within a group context. I feel working with my sister will only improve this confidence more, allowing for communication in future collaborations to flow easily.
Mimi lives in Cumbria and so for the entirety of this project our communication will be done virtually, through phone calls, messages and video calls. This is a project I would have much preferred to do in person with her as I find much more inspiration through physically working with someone in the same room rather than separately. However, these are the circumstances for this project therefore I will have to accept this and become comfortable with this form of communication.
The potential of this project excites me. I am really looking forward to working visually again as this is something I have missed, having been focused on sound for the past 2 years. I feel my creative expression relies on both the input of sound and visuals to fully convey the emotional meaning. I also feel very motivated about this project being a series of work, as the idea of having an ongoing project inspires me and gives me a push to create. As well, I look forward to having a collection of work that displays my creative abilities in an interdisciplinary form that I can add to my portfolio.