It’s the beauty in the layered aspect of life, and the objects & environment that compose it that inspire artist designer Helena Bajaj Larsen to transform raw textile into stylish creations layering intense hand-painted colors and endless textures.
Helena creates abstract art with fabric as her canvas; adding an infinite amount of shades and details, little lines, spots, sometimes so intricate that you might be the only one who sees them. ‘I like the idea you can get lost in a work for hours and see something different each time you gaze at it.’ A curator of textile surfaces, Helena begins by customizing her colors. She partnered with a block printing studio in Jaipur which prepares the acid dyes and the pigment dyes. The white fabric is then pinned onto large tables of 20-30m and she can start composing using her tools: brushes, spades, sprays, sponges… Experimenting with consistencies, the artist mixes colors, adds water here and there to create batches that result in different effects. ‘The liquidity of it will indicate how it spreads once it touches the material and therefore you can control the images which appear.’ An abstract composition intricately layered with an intense splash of colors and harmonious details, will result. Helena is most inspired by the brilliance, luxurious feel and somewhat intrinsic textured roughness of raw silk. The artist, who is constantly exploring, recently played a bit with linen, velvet, cotton and even wool, but chooses to remain loyal to silk. ‘The acid dye painting process I do reacts wonderfully with the material and creates an unparalleled depth in color.’ She originally started to hand-paint textile, as she did not find the pieces she wanted in fabric stores. So, she decided to curate her own surface of a material and transform it into a unique creation.
Helena’s background and studies are in apparel however she always gravitated towards surface development more than silhouette and shape. She studied Fashion Design specializing in materiality at Parsons School of Design in New York. The artist launches series of unique fashion pieces, based on different inspirations and color stories, a few times a year, outside the cyclical fashion calendar. She also applies her work to jewelry, crafting silver into wearable sculptures and created home décor pieces with her signature texturing. Through exhibits, events and publications, Helena built a loyal network of clients, that reach out via her website or Instagram page. The designer prefers to start a conversion with whom will be wearing her art ‘to create together’ she tells us. ‘I have met wonderful people in the process and many have become dear friends or even mentors.’ Travel is a key inspiration for Helena and her discoveries along the road translate into an intense visual vocabulary. Each space leads to new people, interactions and emotional responses which inform the ways in which she innovates from one series to the next. She also uses photography extensively as a starting point for her process and this is typically what will dictate the colors and shapes she decides to include in her body of work. ‘I find beauty in odd things.’ Helena is now finishing a textile residency at Jax industrial district in Riyadh, where she discovered ‘a burgeoning art scene moving at a crazy speed’. ‘I have not experienced this level of curiosity and hunger for the “new” anywhere else, and an energy of sisterhood, women supporting one another in very genuine ways, professionally and personally’. Her next chapter is a role focused on textile innovation and material research in Amsterdam with designer Iris Van Herpen as an Haute Couture textile technique developer. She now embarks on this new quest for depth and beauty, ‘less than 48hours after I leave Riyadh!’.
www.helenabajajlarsen.com
@helena.bajaj.larsen
