Dan Thawley: Patrick, is there a direct relationship between your knitted designs and the texts that you program into each of them?
Patrick Carroll: Yes. I keep a long list of potential words and phrases. I think of each piece having five attributes — colour, material, form, language and its placement. Finalising a design is a matter of adjusting each attribute until the piece feels conceptually resonant, without a grand resolution but a looping multidimensional series of local ones.
How do you formulate the poems and phrases in your creations? They tend to harbour philosophical, historical, pop cultural and erotic contexts.
The phrases and words come from a long practice of reading. Some reference openly, whether as a direct quote or paraphrase. Others are my own attempts at synthesising. I’d say there are three interwoven strands of influence–one is American lyric poetry from Emily Dickinson to Mariah Carey; one is broadly Biblical, from Genesis and Shakespeare to Dolly Parton and Magic: the Gathering; and one is ‘faggotry’ & its infinite practitioners. Other ideas include textile as the original technology that catalysed industrialisation and therefore the climate catastrophe. I try to maintain a broad view in time and place.
What kind of yarns do you work with, and where do you source them?
I mostly use cashmere, wool, mohair, silk, cotton, linen and sometimes synthetics. There are a few websites that serve small-scale customers — colourmart.com is the one I go to most.
How did you choose the pieces you are showing in Fujiyoshida?
The space, an abandoned old cafe, informed how I chose the pieces. With Arieh Rosen, who invited me to Fuji Textile Week, I developed a number of smaller one-to-five piece arrangements with their own meaning, and these were the building blocks of the exhibition. For instance, one corner hosts all the Pokémon clothes I had; in another hangs a leotard that says FAIRY ARCHIVE and a shirt that says PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN AS SAINT SEBASTIAN etc.
How do you think geographic, social and cultural context might affect people’s perception of your designs?
I think my work is pretty American, for better or worse, from allusion to imagery. Clarifying what this means is one effort of the whole project. How it’s received elsewhere is a question to be answered by its dissemination, I hope!