The Design Behind Web of Control
Web of Control : A Web of Restraint and Desire
Inspiration : The Spider and the Fly
At this time of year, when the air turns colder and Halloween draws near, we often start to notice large spiders suspended in their intricate webs.
Their presence feels both ordinary and mysterious, a reminder of beauty, precision, and instinct working together.
Watching one outside my window, I was captivated by her quiet technical mastery, how she built something delicate yet powerful enough to capture and control. That moment became the seed for Web of Control.
The idea of entrapment, the spider’s web catching the fly echoed the tension found in harness straps and architectural forms that often appear in my work. It felt natural to merge these references: the web as structure, the harness as design, and the human instinct for control as theme.
Soon after, a friend shared Mary Howitt’s 1829 poem The Spider and the Fly. Its careful rhythm and language of seduction, both inviting and cautionary, resonated deeply. The poem became a mirror for my thoughts about beauty, risk, and desire, and how these can coexist within form.
The Process of Creating : My Methodology
This design grew through a layered process of line drawing, mono printing, and digital transformation. Each stage was a negotiation between instinct and precision, the same duality that fascinated me in the spider’s work.
It began with drawing, exploring movement and balance in simple lines. These sketches evolved into mono prints, building texture and depth through touch and repetition. The prints carried traces of pressure and gesture, small human imperfections that made each one unique.
From there, I digitally refined the imagery, using geometry and layering to create a structure reminiscent of both web and harness. The digital phase allowed me to sharpen the tension, enhancing the sense of restraint and rhythm.
This combination of analogue and digital methods became the architecture of the design itself - a meeting point between control and release.
The Result
Printed with fiery orange-pink against deep black, Web of Control transforms seasonal imagery into an abstract, wearable artwork. The composition suggests a web, but also an engineered structure, part organic, part mechanical.
Every piece carries the imprint of its making, from the first drawn line, part hand-made print, to the final digital output. Web of Control is not only about what is seen, but what is felt in the making, the pull of structure, the rhythm of repetition, and the small accidental marks.
In spirit, Web of Control belongs to Halloween, not through horror or disguise, but through transformation. It explores the line between attraction and danger, just as the spider’s web catches light and life in equal measure.
This Halloween, Web of Control invites you to think beyond costume or fear - to explore the architectures that hold us, the patterns we build, and the quiet beauty in every act of control.
Artist’s Reflection
Web of Control begins my ongoing series, Configurations of Desire (soon to be released in time for Christmas) where I examine how structure shapes emotion and identity.
In this piece, control is both subject and method: the process of layering, refining, and editing becomes a metaphor for how we build our own architectures of restraint and freedom.
I’m interested in how mechanical forms can express intimacy, and how acts of making mirror emotional states, the precision of a web, the tension of a strap, the repetition of a print.
Ultimately, this work is about connection, between the hand and the machine, between instinct and intention, between the viewer and the maker.
Like the spider’s web, it holds both fragility and strength, and reminds us that every act of control carries a trace of creation
The t-shirt is an abstract exploration of tension, desire, and control.