Helen Edwards

Slideshow

£1,500

Handwoven hanging

At the end of 2018, both my parents died within 5 weeks of each other. Their home in Cheshire and a lifetime of possessions, all clad in memories and stories, were left to me.

Since then, I have spent countless hours trundling up and down the M5/M6 carefully and thoughtfully removing their things to new homes.

I found my Dad’s old projector and thousands of slides. Sifting through them I realised they were a record of locations they had visited, looked at and recorded the moment with the click of the camera shutter.

These memories were too precious to discard. I had an idea to weave the slides themselves into a hanging, which when light shines through, would bring to life glimpses of those places my parents had been present in.

I used a vintage cotton thread and a weaving technique called “doubleweave” to create little pockets for the lozenges of slides to be held in.

When I took the woven hanging off the loom and held it up to the light, the name “Slideshow” popped into my head - and so this is what the piece is called.

Materials and process:

To be hung by a light source to illuminate the slides.

Materials -vintage cotton thread, my late parent's photographic slides.
Process - Doubleweave woven on my Louet Octado loom.