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Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Book Review: Anne Kelly - Textile Folk Art



Textiles as both a cultural and as an everyday foundation is probably nearly as old as our species. We have expressed ourselves as individuals, as communities as nations through fabric and stitch across countless generations, as we do today and will do for generations to come.
Anne Kelly shows in her book 'Textile Folk Art', how folk art has worked as a phenomenon across the planet, and how it has been a lasting cultural identity for many, and just as importantly how it can be used by the individual through self-expression in the contemporary world.
This is not a purely historical guide to textile folk art, as good as that would be. No, there is much more to this book. It is indeed a practical guide to understanding and producing your own folk art.
Through a range of contemporary and historical examples, and through comprehensive and clear guidance, Anne gets the artist to question how they can gather personalised mementoes, memories of self, of family, of community, and how to enmesh these encapsulated variations of self into textile work that will become projects of personality, of faith in the continuation of self and others.
From collage, stitchwork, patchwork, screen printing, book making, through to fine art installations, Textile Folk Art expands the traditions of folk art into one that can so easily be embraced by todays contemporary artist.


Anne Kelly is a textile artist and tutor. She trained in Canada and the UK, and is based in Kent, teaching and speaking to guilds and groups throughout the UK. Her work is exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including private collections in the Vatican Collection in Rome and at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto. Recently she has been a featured gallery artist at the autumn and spring Knitting and Stitching Shows in London, Harrogate and Dublin. She has been artist in residence at a Sussex garden and guest artist at textile shows in Prague, Beaujolais and the Luberon. She is on the UK’s Crafts Council Register. Anne is the co-author of Connected Cloth and Textile Nature, also published by Batsford.
Textile Folk Art is widely available from the specialist textile art and design publisher Batsford.

Anne Kelly:

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