Studio Series: Hexagon collage

Hexagons collage © Karen Thiessen 2012

Detail of Hexagons collage © Karen Thiessen 2012 

An education in textile design made its mark on me. Yessiree, I love pattern. While I was a Sheridan student learning about repeat patterns, I started looking at fabric and wallpaper to see if I could find the initial repeat unit (it's been a while and obviously I've forgotten the official lingo). One evening while visiting friends, five adults found ourselves in the master bedroom seeing who could find the repeat element in the new curtains first. That's all that we did, seriously.

An obsession with triangles and hexagons came about by chance. Kristiina Lahde's Shadow of Collapse piece from her Kaleidoscope series grabbed my imagination when I saw it in a group show in 2009 at List gallery in Toronto. The piece continues to inspire me to expand my digital pattern-making skills in Photoshop and Illustrator. Kristiina and I were at Sheridan and then NSCAD together. She studied ceramics at Sheridan and then moved into mixed media at NSCAD. Basically, Kristiina is brilliant and how she approaches her art-making fascinates me.