Jaz Sleeper - BA (Hons) Textiles in Practice
The elements
I’m an artist who uses art as a spiritual practise, deeply connected to nature. Holding space for others to create art in is one of my favourite ways to spend this existence, and I adore integrating my passions around sustainability, spirituality and holistic wellbeing into my creative practise.
I believe art and life are inseparable, and so I have an eclectic, and multifaceted approach. Spending time outdoors, breathing, and collecting materials are sacred and vital parts of my creative process and are one example of the blurred lines between spiritual and creative practise. I believe the process of creating art is much more interesting and important than the art itself, and so intentionality is a core aspect of my process too.
My intention for the past year creatively has been to express reverence to the elements of nature; this has involved the making of a well dressing in community to worship water, making a woven tactile mandala to worship fire, as well as collaborative hand spun woven pieces to worship earth and air.
Another facet of this intentionality is expressed through material choices, which is deeply important to me, as an environmentalist working for the Carbon Literacy Project. I use almost entirely discarded, end of life materials from scrap shops and rubbish I collect, as well as foraged natural materials.
Collecting is a core part of my practise, I discover what will come next once I have a material bank established. Techniques which interest me most always involve process, with my current focuses being spinning and weaving.
