Artist Analysis - Debbie Smyth

Debbie Smyth is a contemporary textile artist specialising in nail and thread drawings. She creates her works by accurately plotting nails into walls and stretching various amounts of threads between them to create an image that range from towns to people. Most of her work is installed directly onto walls, installations, exhibitions and public areas giving her work a 3D effect. The effect she gives at first looks like a mass of thread everywhere yet it is actually directed and controlled, which is what I would like to accomplish in my own piece of work.

She had been interested in thread since she had learned to sew at a very early age.  She had studied in the West Wales School of the Arts and Colaiste Stiofain Naofa, Cork, doing both textiles and art, craft and design, which influenced her style of working with threads and nails to create what she does today. She was also influenced by the work of Michael Raedecker, Thomas Raschke, Anne Wilson, and Laura Thomas and found them inspiring by their work of textiles. Debbie Smyth tries to convey a meaning of great feeling and energy and spontaneity, as well as occasionally humour.  

The work titled ‘It’s a small world’ installed as part of The Map is not the Territory exhibition at 44AD Bath, is a thread and nail drawing of our world. At a first glance, it looks like lines connected to each side of the wall in the corner with the shape of the part of the world on either side, seemingly being connected by the lines. She only uses black thread against a pure white wall, emphasising contrast in this 3D structure. There are also white blocks on the black floor, further fitting with the black and white colour scheme as well as contrasting with the floor. The blocks in the piece do not touch the white wall to keep with the contrast. The blocks could be seen as buildings, particularly from a city, and a close up of the back thread artwork of our world behind the blocks. The lines connecting the worlds are with very thin thread, so the worlds that have been layered repeatedly with thread stand out even behind the thread lines. The lines can be seen as connections, meaning that all of the world is somehow connected one way or the other, maybe by technology, politics or even similarities. Therefore, despite the long distance there is from one another, there are still ways of connecting every one of us together. The meaning is quite a serious one, because it makes you think deeper into the piece and how technological advances have actually helped communication in our time now than how it was in the past.

Debbie Smyth is usually a very flexible artist when it comes to scale, frequently using walls from a museum or even interior walls from homes as a form of surface which are all different shapes and sizes. All of her work has a 3D element as she uses nails and thread so it sticks out the wall. The extent of how much she uses the thread is quite large, as she has pure black areas which would use a huge amount of thread in her work. The thread makes it so the lines are usually straight, but with a large amount of thread in the corner. This is so not all the lines are the same thickness because she sometimes uses a different amount of thread in certain areas to emphasise the lines and detail in the piece. Debbie Smyth doesn’t include much variety of mark making, but it is very loose but controlled in the way she handles the thread to create the accurate representations of objects and people. She does not include any tone, as the only medium she uses is black thread. However, the shade from the thread onto the wall can be counted as tone as it is 3D. Because she doesn’t use any primary colours (only uses black thread on white walls) her colours are very limited also, as her work is very monochrome and does not include any form of shading. The lack of a variety of colours gives the viewer the chance to be more focused on the actual image, rather than the colours. This may have been what the artist had intended, as it allows the viewer to understand he deeper meaning quicker than if they were just focused on the colour. She has a 3D texture, because she uses primarily black thread in the piece of work that sticks out from the smooth texture of the wall it is used on.

She works into her piece by first using a completely white wall as her background. She then proceeds to nail into the wall the basic shape of what she intends to make with her thread. Finally, she arranges the thread around the nails, creating an image made of thread. The meaning behind her works are very varied, some have a serious meaning relating to the world or society while others are quite comedic. The meanings are usually inferred by the subjects themselves, due to only using black and white in her artworks.

Debbie Smyth is a very unique artist and I find her inspiring due to the way she uses thread to create that 3D effect. I do not find her meanings behind her work as inspiring as her technique, which I would like to be able to use in my theme of ‘time’ and ‘broken’, because her thread works can be interpreted into a more dark and meaningful meaning when used in a certain way.