SDA Book Club: Mixed Media Textile Art reviewed by Faith Hagenhofer
September 5, 2025
Mixed Media Textile Art in three dimensions by Ann Goddard
Ann Goddard’s Introduction lays out what her intentions are with this work, explicitly clarifying and owning her unusual approaches to art-making. “A friend described me as working with ‘extreme mixed media,’” and indeed she does. Further, she declares her practice as ‘hybrid’, quoting Laurie Britton Newell’s take on textiles, “not a separate category, but an ingredient, a process, (a) something that has enabled the making of idea(s) into visible things.” Due to the less expected nature of Goddard’s chosen media, she does well to offer this often playful book. More often than not, her techniques are textiles traceable to weaving, embroidery, wrapping, tying, and the like, while her media are more eclectic rubber, wire, bristles, neoprene, wood, netting, rebar, bark, metal mesh, concrete slate and other rocks, sticks, and paperish stuff. She has used fire to engage a viewer’s senses of color and texture, and is devoted to three dimensionality in the work. To quote Annie Albers “material is a means of communication.”
Goddard additionally offers her working methods, unpacking her intangible practices. One gets the idea that she has developed a rubric of process, which includes her short cuts in ideation and execution. Thus, boxed into themes, research, material experiments, and digging for meaning Goddard is ready to work the elements of her pieces and then work them into a whole. In Mixed Media Textile Art, Goddard shares how she does what she does, and after reading this, I’m sure she adheres closely to the steps and elements of her very own practice. It is awesome to have this shared. It is almost a memoir, but presented as if her formulae were transferrable. Her very methodical ways of working don’t quite address those things that come before an idea takes hold. There are moments when it seems like she’s justifying her ways and her work as having a place under the umbrella of “textile art.” Taken for granted is the idea that an artist has tended to what they are drawn to. This is not explored. Nor does she say very much about what her hands are doing in the making.
I appreciate a differentiation between work in multiples, (with a nice list of fellow multiple makers on p.104) where the accumulation of elements adds up to one, and work in series, where the connections from piece to piece are more like a relay race.
There are several places where the work of seven other kindred artists are shown, along with single page statements. I resonated with Hilary Bower, self-described maker of mixed media “drawings,” “It is through this activity that I can clarify thoughts, concepts, and understand what I can see in my mind’s eye… clarifying and questioning my creative investigations”.
Goddard’s book allows me, an artist-reader, to reflect on my own processes and practices, be they messy or organized, my skills, and media. This book comes as a welcome look behind a very particular curtain.
–Faith Hagenhofer
- Publisher: Batsford (buy it here)
- Date: September 2022
- ISBN: 9781849946926
If you’ve read this book, leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Do you have a recommendation for a recent fiber-related book you think should be included in SDA’s Book Club? Email SDA’s Managing Editor, Lauren Sinner, to let her know!
