My research interests centre around emotional attachment to textiles, objects and place, the psychology of nostalgia and the sense of wellbeing experienced from reconnecting with fashion, everyday objects and the stories, real and imagined, that accompany their past use and glory.
I’ve always had a certain affinity with Leicester’s replica of New York’s Statue of Liberty which once stood proudly on top of the Liberty Shoes’ building on Eastern Boulevard. The factory opened in 1921 is long gone and has been replaced by student flats, but the statue was saved and re-sited on Bede Island opposite the old factory. An incongruous and unusual site to behold, the statue stands in the middle of a busy traffic island. The plinth has a plaque which reads; “when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon”, Thomas Payne 1737-1809.
Thomas Payne and his quote doesn’t have anything to do with the statue or the Liberty Shoe factory, but the quote does resonate in our current Covid dominated world where none of us are really free to travel across the world. The story of the statue and the factory does have a connection with freedom and travel, however. My interest in the statue led me to do some research which uncovered the story of the Lennard Brothers, who owned a large shoe manufacturing business with headquarters in Leicester.
After the First World War the Lennard brothers took a trip to New York to investigate modern shoe production methods. They were so inspired by the vision of the Statue of Liberty as they approached New York Harbour by sea, on their return to Leicester they renamed their company Liberty Shoes and had a replica statue made and placed on top of their new factory.
Drawing on elements of the Liberty Shoes’ story, I created a large-scale textile print design. A 2020 Liberty Shoe is layered over the iconic Statue’s headpiece and ocean shipping lines representing the inspired trip of the Lennard brothers between Leicester and New York. The result is a fun and joyful textile design which now features as a series of panels across an empty shop window in Leicester’s Market Street as part of the Street Stories public art project . The design has a nostalgic, retro feel and a connection to a historical object. It also has a resonance in the current Covid crisis reflecting the concept of liberty and freedom and the uncertainty of when we will be able to walk free once again across the world.
Street Stories was commissioned by the Leicester Business Improvement District and delivered by Leicester design agency Arch Creative. My design was selected to represent De Montfort University Fashion & Textiles MA Department alongside ten other artists active in the local community who were tasked with producing creative responses to past and present success stories of Leicester’s pioneering people and innovations. The Street Stories project aims to create an engaging ‘street museum trail’ for city centre visitors to enjoy. The windows of ten currently vacant shops feature images on large-scale printed vinyl panels which reveal animated imagery and narratives triggered as passers-by scroll over the windows with a free smartphone app to bring the empty shop windows to life. The project aims to regenerate and bring new life to some of the city’s run down shopping street to help attract new retail tenants to the empty shop units.
Find out more about Street Stories here https://www.bidleicester.co.uk/streetstories/
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