Claude Acker : unusual weavings

What kind of creative are you?

I define myself as a "TEXTILE designer, warp and weft." Depending on my mood, how I feel, I gathered all sorts of materials, ribbons, raffia, silk yarns, cotton, paper, sequins, beads. I assemble in many ways by colors, transparency effects, poetry, geometry. I do not make sketches or drawings, I move at the whim of overs.

When my fingers are busy, I feel free, I don't get bored, I feel couragious ! I take this opportunity to reflect on my practice, my personal fittings. But I weave for the other's eyes, so that my creations can travel.

What are the applications of your work?

Destinations of my work can very much vary. I like to embellish but also that it remains light and fun, derisory, make people laugh! Somehow I am an "emberlificoteuse" (someone who likes to entangle) !  I learned the craft of tapestry at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs d'Aubusson, an art of rigor and high quality work. According the French expression "One hundred times on the job…" When I used to walk in this city and cross the bridge, some people called me "La Fille des Arts" and I kept this nickname.

Then willing to exit the initial frame, I started to learn other techniques. I have followed professional training courses (master weaver), and I also learned in places where I was a teacher (painting on fabric, batik). The yoke of learning, the imposed figures, start and start over was very painful. I then started to work with paper.

By coincidence I meet someone who was doing a beautiful job: he was a tissue "ennoblisseur". He suggested me to show my creations to the best Haute Couture designers. So I decided to show my guts and I start to introduce myself. The first to notice my work was Christian Lacroix. He was very interested in my work while asking whether, beyond paper, I knew the over work… "So I got back to my old know-how to adapt to its own research.

I kept going on the same path working for John Galliano, Ungaro, Dior, Chanel. For a few years I made a lot of woven pieces for a somewhat strange but talented character, which had mounted a high end weaving "atelier". We were three girls, weaving all day long unique tissues for the Haute-Couture.

For the Collections of creators, I brought a more personal touch with jewelry armed over, with clinging beads, woven paper, feathers, sequins. I was often beginning on a somewhat rough frame and then added more luxury items like beads or feathers. I have "diverted" hundreds of copies of the newspaper "Le Monde", by weaving strips of paper drawn from the information, events, stories I chose then to make disappear! I liked making belts, collars, clourful accessories. I enjoyed this world of ceaseless creativity - sometimes genius - the excitement, passion, capricious, the sudden rejection of what was adored. I do not know if I want to go back… I have known and loved the "master of embroidery ": Francois Lesage, patient and reserved, so inspired and eager to connect and mingle links so that it goes for ever …

Well you are following a path with a very special frame, aren't you ?

It's true that I have a great difficulty to get rid of what I have learned. But I know today that the rigor, obsession for a well done job, makes me free, almost with a carefree judgement on what I am doing. I weaves of the ephemeral. When I want to work on "scoubidous overs", I feel completely free to do it ! I am asked to design a luminary, it becomes a sculpture in roasting, ribbons and paper for the purpose of dreaming…

The use of the imagination plays a very important role. I also worked on the words, of course! I have woven countless stories with a coloured pencil turned upside down, or automatic writing stories unrolled  in "papillotes" then mounted in jewellery. Hidden stories, tangled up emotions, a way of remembering and forgetting, sometimes by using the technique of Persian carpets prepared to tie, reinvented to untie…

Freedom is also not to be on the rush, to be "on hold" … And spend a lot of time on the contrary to achieve, refine, dismantle a poorly weaven embroidery even if nobody will ever see it. It is curious, so I do not expose what I do, but I do not like to hide technical defects in the tracery of weaving …  this never!    

Since you do not hide, how do you expose your creations?

I have accumulated so much! I never stopped weaving in the course of my life. I lent, offered, threw away. For the Haute Couture designers, I had become accustomed to list materials and prototypes in boxes. I don't think I would feel capable of
exhuming all that stuff … Sometimes also, I am wondering  if creations are the outcome or the inspiration of a unique moment. Sometimes you need to move on to something different. To rebound and start over again is great fun for me. Child, I wanted to make the Circus school …

But I feel a great passion for sharing and passing on what I have learned. So I receltly agreed to spend a lot of time with a publishing house, Dessain & Tolra, for the publication of a book "Unusual weavings" (Release September 2008) - which I am the author and the illustrator - to release unique weavings techniques. There were a number of constraints attached to this publication, of course I prefered to took them into consideration rathen than having someone embroiding the topic. I was dedicated to the term "unusual" in the book's title because it is what weaving is all about ...

What would be the ideal order ?

One which is associated to "travel" and where my practice would allow me to convey my creative tools so that others can use them. I have already done it by participating in projects abroad, in Africa, the Maghreb, Cape Verde, in Dubai. I like to be on an equal footing with local people who also have ancestral techniques to "pass on".

The one that would allow me to innovate; for the time being, I am involved in the creation of ballet's costumes. I am enjoying so much all these frous-frous that need to move while staying up!

That I do not know yet…

The one that would allow me to to create in partnership, take care of myself while taking care for others…