Begin Your Creative Journey with the School of Stitched Textiles

Begin Your Creative Journey with the School of Stitched Textiles

For almost 20 years the School of Stitched Textiles has been delivering textile craft courses to crafters and creators across the world. From their humble beginnings as a needlecraft centre based in a quiet Lancashire village, the School of Stitched Textiles has become a globally renowned provider and one of the few centres delivering impressive distance learning courses.

The School of Stitched Textiles’ creative journey began back in 2000 when the now Head of Centre, Dr Gail Cowley established the school. With a specialism in Designing Textiles and Metal and a postgraduate cert in Education, as well as a PhD in e-Learning, Gail went about combining her expertise in both education and craft to deliver City & Guilds of London textile programmes in Embroidery and Patchwork.

After a few years the demand for courses far outweighed the teaching space available so Gail went about designing City & Guilds courses that could be delivered via distance learning - expanding their remit and their reach. Today the School offers an impressive range of textile based courses including knitting, crochet, hand embroidery, machine embroidery, stumpwork, textiles, felting and patchwork & quilting, across varying skill levels, making them the UK’s largest distance learning provider delivering City & Guilds accredited textile courses. 

Gail says, ‘it took us the best part of five years to establish all of the courses we have on offer today because the approval process is so stringent. But certificated, accredited courses are vital for learning and expanding on correct techniques and encouraging creative ideas, which is why they are so important for those who wish to prove their skill level, either to themselves or to an employer or client.  Our graduate students have gone on to teach, author books, design patterns or go on to study further education. For beginners we believe that a certified course provides the best possible foundations for those looking to begin their creative journey.’ 

The accredited courses on offer are a serious business. With the average course taking around one and a half years to complete (depending on the speed you wish to tackle tasks) they definitely have a lot to offer. Gail adds, ‘many modules on each of our courses encourage students to use different techniques, experiment with ideas and play around with their own creativity. More importantly, the courses are fundamental to nurturing creative confidence, allowing people to take their craft to the next level, whatever that may be.’

And it’s not just for serious artists and crafters. The school has recently established a range of online courses for absolute beginners which are all delivered through online videos. These promise to be great introductions to new crafts as well as a fantastic opportunity to meet the tutors, and gain an insight into the more advanced accredited courses.

Intake for the accredited courses is limited and they only accept new students during enrolment which opens between 3 and 4 times per year. If you’re interested in enrolling you first need to express your interest via their website which is the only way to be invited to enroll. The School are also offering some Creative Bursaries for those that may not have the finances to pay for an accredited course and these can be applied for via their website, at https://www.sofst.org/bursary-application and the deadline for applications is 15th April, but will offer more bursaries towards the end of the year.

Whether you’re ready to begin something new or really starting to go places the School of Stitched Textiles say they are ready to help you on your creative journey.

Book Review: Rosie James - Stitch Draw

Figurative stitch has taken great strides in the last few years. It has taken on both a popularity and a much needed contemporary feel. Embroidery in general today is much more relevant, much more topical, much more strident – stitch has become a home for protest, examination, observation, and for solutions. There seems no better time to release a book of where we are regarding contemporary figurative stitching, and how to help produce the drawing of stitch, than now.

Stitch Draw by Rosie James is a comprehensive guide to figurative stitching, giving techniques and tips regarding free style stitch – drawing with stitch.

Rosie guides the reader through a whole series of techniques and working methods, from setting up a sewing machine, through to drawing exercises that take you from pencil to stitch. This is a book that liberates the artist. There is no tight framework of the ‘right’ way of doing things, this is very much a book that expects the artist to liberate, to literally run with the stitch.

From the background of tradition to the forefront of contemporary art, stitch has made an extraordinary run through the last few years, in no small part due to the high profile artists who have pushed the limits of what can and should be achieved by stitch. These artists have taken stitch and placed it at the cutting edge of contemporary life, and often of contemporary protest. Artists who examine the world that we find ourselves in, and find aspects of that world wanting, are now firmly ensconced within the techniques of stitch, and particularly figurative stitching.

Rosie James gives voice to that element of contemporary figurative stitch in Stitch Draw. She celebrates the extraordinary depth of her own work, which liberally illustrates Stitch Draw, but also highlights the work of some of the best contemporary artists that are using stitch today. Artists such as: mags James, Maria Wigley, Hinke Schreuders, Nike Schroeder, Tucker Schwarz, Leigh Bowser, Sophie Strong and more.

This isn’t a book limited to textile artists, or those wanting to enter the textile art field. This is a book for artists – of any discipline, it is a book for artists who want to explore another way of expressing themselves. That is the important message of contemporary stitch, stitch is a drawing technique and can be experimented on and by any artist. It is a message stated loud and clear in Stitch Draw.

Rosie James is a textile artist with a fine art background. She studied textiles at Goldsmiths College London and runs workshops on her stitch-drawing techniques throughout the UK. Her works are exhibited in museums around the world.

Stitch Draw: Design and Techniques for Figurative Stitching by Rosie James, is published by Batsford and is available from October 4 2018.

Book Review: Claire Wellesley-Smith 'Slow Stitch'

This is a book that has the expansion of time as its essence. Not the creation of time, as in there is never enough, but in the understanding that time has personal boundaries, as much as it does impersonal boundaries.

To take moments of your day in order to not contemplate what you didn’t achieve yesterday, and what you will have to try and achieve tomorrow, to let the moment of ‘now’ wash over you as the only moment, to worry less, and smile more at simple procedures of contentment, this is at the core of Slow Stitch.

Slow Stitch, or to give it its full title Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art, is a newly published book by the textile artist Claire Wellesley-Smith. Claire teaches extensively, working in adult education, schools, community-based projects, museums, and galleries. She runs workshops that involve the ideas of sustainable stitch, repurposed cloth, and traditional techniques of hand production.

It is no surprise therefore, that her new book Slow Stitch, should concentrate on the self-same ideas of sustainability, repurposing, and the techniques of hand production that can be brought into the world of textile art.

To understand Slow Stitch is to understand calmness, contemplation, and mindfulness. To understand these, and more importantly, to integrate them into our lives, is to understand that it is OK to unwind a little, that it is OK to place the demands of the twenty-first century to one side, at least for part of your day.

Stitch, and the art of hand stitch is a great and simple means in which to enter the world of the momentary, of the mindful and contemplative world of calmness. The repetitive rhythm of stitch, producing single moments one after the other, can be likened to listening to the ocean waves, to taking note of slow and steady breathing, the beat of the planet.

It is an exercise in purposeful motions, of creating moments, rather than being led by them. Creating stitch, is creating a path, creating a set of elements that can remove you from the world of the twenty first century.

It is measured time, whether self-measured, or measured by the task, it becomes the same thing in the end. Through a range of parts and chapters Claire shows us how so many aspects of textile art can easily be slowed down, treated with respect and calmness.

She shows us how taking note of time, energy, the place that you inhabit while working, can all have an effect on the process, and the result of the process.

Whether working with local materials, repurposing old textiles, natural dyeing, the use of hand stitch and other traditional techniques, all add and accumulate, all move the maker and artist in a direction that has purpose, has meaning.

Claire includes in her book a range of practical projects such as stitch journals, mapping local walks in stitch and found objects, and working with other artists, all part of an attempt to seriously encourage textile artists, or those artists who choose to integrate an element of textile art into their work, to make reconnections with their love of textiles, with their local culture and their local environment, all for the betterment of creativity.

Book Review: Cas Holmes Stitch Stories

Where do ideas come from? Where can interesting source material be found? What is inspiration and how can it be developed? How can you sustain interest in your work from source material to finished piece? How do you tread your own authentic and unique creative path? What can you add to the world of creativity that is a definition of you? Who are you as an artist, and where are you going?

These are just some of the questions that are answered in Cas Holmes new book Stitch Stories. It is a book full of headings, sub-headings, lists of intent, ideas, prompts, and helping hands. Each segment of the book goes into great detail on its particular method, expanding to incorporate a wealth of tried and tested, as well as novel ideas, in how to approach a level of uniqueness that is the role of the artist in us all.

Stitch Stories is aimed at a textile and mixed media audience and is therefore geared towards artists who work, or intend to work, in those fields. The book is full of rich colour photos of Cas own work, as well as the inspiring work of many other artists as well. There are full colour photos of completed works, as well as many works in progress, and most importantly photos of sketch books, one of the areas of work in progress that so many either get stuck on, or are unclear as to what they should contain.

To run through the different chapters of the book in order, will probably give you a good inkling as to why this book is such a valuable addition to the artist. It is often a difficult task looking for rich and useful inspirational starting points in which to pursue a series of work, the journey that those inspirational points should take in order to produce work that is both a reflection of those starting points, as well as being an important part of who you are as both an individual, is perhaps the hardest of all.

Places, Spaces, and Traces - deals with the recording of your experiences, your observations, your feelings of the world that you observe around you. This segment deals with creating a journal, sketchbook, or other form of recording, such as photography. Collecting information is always the starting point of any form of creative development, and choosing what appeals to you personally is a large part of whether your work will develop or not.

Seizing Inspiration - explores a range of potentials for inspiration and exploration, and includes such ideas as using memory and history as reference points, using drawing and simple collage as valuable exercises in focused or unfocused inspiration, allowing the mind to wander, allowing it to draw inspiration from a line, a colour, a texture, all vital elements in the creative journey.

The Natural World - gives a number of starting points, with the idea of nature being their source. Nature is all around and within us, so it is equally relevant and a ready source of inspiration, whether you live in a rural or urban environment.

Studying and observing the natural world, whether it be in a woodland, or a backyard, is connecting with that natural world. It can be observing, identifying, and recording the differing elements to be found in a canopy of trees, reeds along a riverbank, or indeed tough weeds growing out of an urban wall, all are relevant and all have value to the environment as they do to the artist.

Cas also makes it clear how important the cycle of seasons is to anyone interested in using the natural world as a source of inspiration. To observe the same environment through the change in seasons is to understand the layers of change and meaning that can be found within that framework.

All in the Detail - deals with the details that are so much a part of any piece of artwork, those details often come from source material themselves, or indeed from the ambience in which those materials are found.

The world is a complexity of meaning, and we are part of that complexity. Cas gives us a range of artists work that deals in those details of intricacy that they find in inspirational source material, and that they then project out through their work.

Off the Beaten Track - looks at the artist and their responses, through work, of personal themes and interests, rather than generic. A number of artists show their self-expression through an interest in personal family history, social history, comments on historical or contemporary society. Cas gives us a range of artists who have used textiles, both specifically and generally to make a point.

Telling Stories - the last segment continues from the previous, but gives examples of how you can tell your own story, how you can express what you need and want to say, through a range of helpful examples and that is what it is all about, giving you a range of tools in order to effectively express yourself.

It is so important that self-expression be encouraged. Your own story, your own viewpoint, your own perspective on the world, is a constantly unique one. There may well be seven billion people on the planet, but there is only ever one of you. Cas is fully aware of this and has spent a large proportion of her art career guiding and encouraging others to express themselves through creative paths that only belong to them.

If you have the tools and you have the vocabulary then how you use them is up to you. This book is not a book that wants to show you how to work like Cas, how to produce work that copies where Cas has been and where she is going artistically and creatively, it is a book that shows you how to work like yourself, to find your own centre, your own creative strength, to be able to express yourself as your own true self, and not like another, and for that reason, amongst many, I highly recommend Stitch Stories.

SUE STONE EXHIBITION

Sue Stone: Faith, 2017 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, acrylic paint)

Sue Stone: Displaced

April 28 - May 28, 2017

Owen James Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Time, memory and family are at the heart of Sue Stone’s mixed-media works. She merges the past and the present to connect personal histories and local identities through dream-like narratives. Starting with old family photographs, she interprets and transforms them through techniques that include hand & machine stitched embroidery, fabric collage, writing and painting.

Stone is also deeply influenced by the history of her native Grimsby, England. For many years, Grimsby supported a major seaport and fishing industry, and where Stone’s father was fish merchant. The industry declined over time, but allusions to it remain in her work.  Stone started sewing early on, learning from and working with her mother who was a tailoress until her early death. This sense of loss, and of displacement, in both emotional and economic terms, is an ongoing theme for the artist.

Sue Stone: Fate, 2017 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, acrylic paint)

Sue Stone: Hope, 2017 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, acrylic paint)

While she will often make preparatory designs and studies, Stone “draws” her figures by directly stitching on fabric. At times she will use odd swatches from a piece of clothing once worn by the figure she is creating. At other times she carefully creates the figure’s clothing through a series of exquisite stitch techniques. We see parts of the unadorned base fabric come through, an indication perhaps that what lies beneath is as important as what is above. Hand-stitched text, relating a certain figures’ story, will sometimes also be added into the background.

Sue Stone: Remember Me Study #7, 2014 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, acrylic paint)

Sue Stone: Study for The Boys Go Down To London Town, 2014 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, acrylic paint)

The figures that populate Stone’s imagery waft back and forth through time. In some works she shows several generations of relatives, all at once but at different ages. For example, in The Boys Go To London Town (2014) we see the artist’s father-in-law, along with his own father and uncle. They are dressed for a jaunt about Grimsby, with a classic car from the period. However, they are standing in a present-day London street. Interestingly, sometimes the location is Grimsby Street, in London’s East End. Sharing the same name as her home town, the area in London has also seen seen better days in the past, but is now currently undergoing gentrification as one of the city’s more interesting artistic hubs. Stone photographs graffiti during her travels, and has recently been incorporating it into her works. Graffiti can serve as a liberating symbol, a statement of fact to the world that an artist once existed in a certain place at a certain time. In this same way Stone often incorporates the image of a fish, a personal symbol of Grimsby’s economic past, and of her own. This combination of the real and the unreal, and of the then and the now, is also a balance between playfulness and intimacy.

Sue Stone: Study For The Unknown Statistic (Never Forget), 2014 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, acrylic paint)

Sue Stone: The Boys Go To London Town, 2014 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, fabric paint)

Sue Stone is currently the chair of The 62 Group of Textile Artists, an international select membership of textile artists. She studied fashion at St. Martins School of Art and embroidery at Goldsmiths College, London. 

Check the Owen James Gallery for more details of this exhibition, and much more.

All imagery and text were kindly supplied by the Owen James Gallery.

Sue Stone: When Will This Ever End?, 2014 (mixed media, hand/machine stitch, acrylic paint)

Roxanne Lasky and the Tide of Movement

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Migration. Hireath

So many creative individuals come to work with textiles, some briefly integrating the discipline within their larger mixed media work, others looking for some significance that they feel that textiles can bring them. Artists can drift into textiles through seeming coincidence, others with a more defined purpose. 

Fine artists in particular often seem drawn to textiles as a medium in which they feel comfortable. It seems to give them a means in which to express themselves more clearly, more empathically, it gives them a subtlety of colour and texture, and perhaps more importantly, it gives them a means to express themselves emotionally.

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 1

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 1 (detail)

The artist Roxanne Lasky came to textile art through fine art painting, she originally expressed herself through watercolour and oils. It is not hard to see elements of that fine art discipline in Roxanne's work, she has a light painterly touch to her compositions. However, it would be a mistake to see this artist as doing nothing more than replicating the early work she produced in paint, within textiles.

Roxanne has grown as a creative artist, as all artists must. She has learnt to understand and to appreciate both the limitations, as well as the freedoms that textiles can give to her as an artist. It is a discipline that can be complex, as well as simplistic. It has many layers of process, often literally, and these layers of process guide the exploration of the artist, they create parameters for work, narrative, and composition.

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 3

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 3 (detail)

Parameters are always useful to an artist. We talk a lot about the intellectual and creative freedom of an artist, and of course that is of paramount importance, but disciplines have their own rules, understandings, and limitations, and as an artist you can either fight against those seeming constraints, or you can flow with them, allowing them to cushion and guide your creative pathway.

Personal narrative is a driving force in Roxanne's work. Personal experience influences, colours, and reflects within her compositions, they emerge if you like, from the life of the artist. Roxanne is very much involved with the themes of place, cycles, movement, transformation, and migration. 

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 4

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 4 (detail)

Her work runs on major titled themes such as Tidal, Migration, Memory. These themes can easily be seen as belonging to the larger external world, the world of environment, and our place within it, and to an extent they are. However, Roxanne equally deals with these subject titles as an internal exploration and expression, and this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of her work, as it is where we all sit, internally looking out at the external.

Externally, we seem caught up in the web of life, trapped in the constraints of movement and cycles that are not necessarily of our choosing. However, internally our lives seem governed by our own sense of place, cycle, migration. We travel along the paths of our own purpose, often repeating elements of ourselves, travelling in circles and cycles of meaning that suit us. We are part of a tide of movement, not through the physical world, but through the world of our own meaning, our own perception. 

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. 27 Stages (detail)

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. 12 Moons (detail)

Perception is our tool of individuality, and individual perception is the most significant work tool of the artist. Roxanne's creative themes are her personal themes, they are her personal perspective. Her compositions are the product of her practical working process, as well as her deep internal process. Both drive the other along their twin paths towards completion, both are of equal significance, both are needed to complete the creative work, and both give us the continuing expression of the artist Roxanne Lasky.

More of Roxanne's work can be found at her website: www.roxannelasky.com, as well as at the social media sites of: twitter, facebook, instagram, pinterest.

All of the imagery used for this article was kindly supplied by the artist herself, and is therefore copyrighted to her. Please do not reuse the imagery unless you have permission from Roxanne herself.

Illustration: Roxanne Lasky. Tidal 2

The Profanity Embroidery Group

Illustration: Annie Taylor. Fucketyfucketyfuckfuckfuck

Most textile disciplines have been around for countless generations. They have a long history of relevance and tradition, they also have a long history of being connectors of individuals, groups and communities, very often using innovation, and subversion.

Embroidery is a textile discipline in particular that has had more than its fair share of relevance, continually reinventing itself within different contemporary eras, with each successive generation finding the means to reinvent, or at least add towards, the strong tradition that it has as part of its history.

Illustration: Alison Fizgerald Lucas. Beaver

There is always a risk that if a discipline does not reflect the contemporary generation that uses it, at least in part, then its fate could well be to become fossilised within its own history, within its own tradition. This is not to say that all practitioners have to reflect the society that they find themselves in, but as long as an element does, the discipline moves forward, and a new expression has been added to the mix.

The Profanity Embroidery Group is one of those elements that is adding a contemporary flavour to the discipline of embroidery. It has only been formed recently, but is full of vigour, fun, and creative energy.

Illustration: Allie Lee. Can't be Arsed

The story of the group is best told by one of its founders the embroiderer Annie Taylor:

About 25 years ago, I sent a Rina Piccolo cartoon to my mother.  18 months or so ago, it fell out of one of her embroidery books, and she returned it to me.  It made me laugh so hard when I saw it, that I promptly shared it to my Facebook page.  It struck a chord with so many friends that within a matter of hours, our first Profanity Embroidery Group meeting. 

The cartoon is of a sweet old lady embroidering hearts and flowers and 'fuck the world': the title was 'Mrs Winchester finds a positive outlet for frustrated negative energy'. 

The Profanity Embroidery Group is made up of around twenty practitioners of varying skills, some had never sewn before, some were self-taught, and some had studied textiles before. The group is based in kent, England, and they meet up every other week at the Duke of Cumberland pub in Whitstable.

Illustration: Bridget Carpenter. Silly Bitch

Their first group project is the Quilt of Profanity which will be unveiled at their first exhibition to be held at the Fishslab Gallery, Whitstable, from February 10-16. Also on show will be a range of Valentine inspired pieces of embroidery work.

If you are going to the exhibition, and I highly recommend it, please be aware that the embroidery work does contain a liberal supply of rude words, so is perhaps not suitable for the young, and the easily offended.

The Profanity Embroidery Group facebook page can be found here, and the Profanity Embroidery Group exhibition facebook page can be found here.

Please be aware that all the imagery used in this article belong to the artists, so please don't reproduce them without permission from the individual artists named.

Illustration: Sarah Jesset. Wanker

Kirsty Wallace - the Practise of Wear and Mend

The artist Kirsty Wallace has always had an interest in the passage of time, in the ageing of materials, in the journey of visible wear and the interaction with that wear, often through the process of mending. She can remember back to her childhood when these ideas made their initial impact on her, where she instinctively came to value items and objects, the 'things' of life that had been discarded by others. 

A part of that interest, at least for Kirsty, was generational. The history of her family, like so many across the planet, was steeped in a strong emphasis on make-do-and-mend, of scarcity, of the lack of luxury, certainly of the luxury to discard. There are rolling and seemingly endless generations of individuals who picked and unpicked fabrics, who added stitches, took stitches away, brought in endless new additions to the fabric, continuing its life as far as they possibly could. Many added their own styles, their own character to this process, but they also added their emotional essence, their ambience of intent and purpose.

Everything in our lives is imbued with emotional layers, layers of memory, of meaning, and of connection, so that when objects and items are discarded they do not lose their emotional charge, they just lose their immediate connection. When we savour and value the discarded, we often pick up on the emotional intensity, the longevity of interaction and care that was put into a piece of fabric. It is both a humbling and energising experience and it is something at the core of Kirsty's work.

This is an artist that understands how important processes are. She became fascinated in the cycle of process that is so much a part of northern Japanese Boro textiles. She finds this particular approach to fabric, the rich layers of wear and mend, sympathetic with her own ideals. Kirsty feels that there is something both tragic and fragile connected to the Boro textiles, yet at the same time she identifies a strength that can be found within the continuation of the process. 

She became so inspired that she set herself the task of adopting the method herself, taking her worn out pair of jeans and seeing how long she could keep the process of wear and mend going. the practise has become much more than an exercise, it has become an emotional bond. Kirsty feels a real and definite connection with her jeans, they have become, through the process of wear and mend, a part of her being, a part of who she is, another layer of herself. 

From this point she has begun to explore the much larger issue of the contemporary world's relationship to the casual discarding of mountains of fabric. The idea has become endemic that we can easily discard anything and everything in our lives, that what we throw away is somehow taken out of existence, which of course is a cruel delusion. We live in a finite world, with finite space, and we are fast approaching the point where our discarded items are just being moved around the planet in ever larger mountains of the unwanted.

In this context she set herself the initial task of giving herself a framework to work in where she took on a one year shopping fast, integrating it into a make-do-and-mend challenge. Before the year was out, the framework became two years, and it is now a continuing process. Kirsty has followed the process so that it has become part of her lifestyle, she does not buy ready made clothes, she does not buy or accept gifts of garments or fabric. 

It has come to the point where the Japanese concept of mottainai 'too good to waste' has become a natural part of Kirsty's life, and she believes that it is something that will remain with her for the rest of her life. Her commitment to understanding her relationship to fabric, to mending, to the care of the physical environment of which we are all a part, should make us all stop and re-evaluate our own understanding and relationship with fabric. It is a path worth treading and if artists like Kirsty can lead the way, then we should be grateful to her and her example.

Check out Kirsty's online site Fibre Alchemy to follow her journey.

The Enduring Antarctic Adventure of Clare Plug

 Illustration: Clare Plug. Ice Crack 2, 2008.

The New Zealand textile artist Clare Plug has spent the last few years of her career developing a fascinating body of work that entails intimately observed details along with wider conceptions and observations of the most rarely visited of all the planets continents.

In 2006 Plug was lucky enough to visit the continent of Antarctica as part of a fellowship, staying with the official government Antarctica NZ at Scott Base in the vicinity of the Ross Ice Shelf. It is no small exaggeration to say that this experience fundamentally changed her views and the entire aspect of her work, so much so that much of the textile art work that she produces to this day is haunted by this most spectacular and hauntingly beautiful continent.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Ice Crack 2 (detail), 2008.

The three works shown here are examples of Plug's Antarctica Series which explores a number of aspects of the continent from the fragile and relatively recent human experience, to the much older and grander sweep of geological and climatic history that has become so pressingly relevant in our own contemporary world.

Through discharge dyeing, applique and quilting techniques, Plug has been able to not only detail her own experiences along with those of others past and present, but perhaps more importantly to focus our attention on the emotional ambience of the landscape and the sense of harsh beauty that it entails. Through her sensitive use of textural colour and stitching, the artist can help us to identify the strange combination of a climate that is so harsh that it can kill most life forms, while at the same time being supremely fragile, delicate and sensitive and so easily prone to destruction by outside forces.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Midnight at the Barne Glacier, 2008.

These moody and sometimes even ethereal textile pieces are in many regards emotionally observed landscapes. Admittedly, they can only give us an indication as to the multiple experiences that would be observed on the continent itself. However, Plugs work has such a defined ambient compositional quality to it that although most of us will probably never visit the continent itself, we can at least share some of the wonder and sheer magnetism of this most intriguing and other-worldly part of the planet.

Through her landscapes, both climatically and geographically based, humans seem to make only the barest and most tenuous of impressions. No more obvious an example of this underlying feeling is Out on the Barrier which seems to give a hint of a hauntingly indistinct portrayal of a possible human symbol, or not. To show our lack of domination of one continent out of seven, everything in Antarctica seems transient, misleading, even misdirected seeming at times to be playing tricks on our senses and our preconceptions. The physical and emotional scale of the experience seems well beyond the human scale in which to focus, catalogue and identify. This often featureless and unimaginably empty continent challenges us to imagine a world where the human species cannot automatically deem themselves dominant, and for our own sanity that feeling of inadequacy mixed with awe, can only be for the betterment of us all.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Out on the Barrier, 2008.

A wide range of Plug's textile art pieces were part of the Look South exhibition held at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch New Zealand. This exhibition was due to continue until the end of September. However, due to the major earthquake experienced by South Island, the exhibition has had to disappointingly close early, though I am sure Plugs hauntingly beautiful textile work will be seen at many more venues in the near future.

Clare Plug has a web presence where much more of her work can be seen. She has exhibited in New Zealand, the US and Europe as well as being featured in a number of publications. Another interesting site listed is that of Antarctica NZ which gives details of New Zealand's official work in Antarctica as well as information on Scott Base where Plug stayed in 2006. On the site there is a webcam of the base which updates every 15 minutes. Both sites can be found in the Reference links section below.

Illustration: Clare Plug. Out on the Barrier (detail), 2008.

All images were used with the kind persmission of the artist.

Reference links:
Clare Plug website
Antarctica New Zealand

Dominie Nash and Haunting Studies of a Dying Leaf

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #8, 2008.

The Big Leaf series of textile art pieces by the artist Dominie Nash allows us to see both the robustness of the natural world along with the delicate and transient character that we often associate with particular aspects of nature. Leaves seem especially poignant to us with their ability to haunt us with ideas about decay and death. However, leaves should also be seen as an aspect of the cycle of life, dropped leaves in autumn only showing us part of that cycle.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Impromptu #9, 2008.

Nash may well have been initially inspired to produce a series of textile art pieces using the construction, both delicate and robust, of a leaf, however the sequence of compositions that she has produced go a long way past any mere observational interest or aspect. These pieces have taken the most important features of the leaf from its complex colour tones to the emulation of the skeletal structure of the leaf through the use of hand stitching. All are portrayed within compositions that cover two very different aspects of fine art. On the one hand, is the analytical, almost medical approach to the anatomy of the leaf. Through that detailed analysis, comes an understanding of the anatomy of nature itself. However, another important aspect that Nash includes in all her work is the creative and inspirational character that underlies all of her work. The artist has an intrinsic understanding of colour tone and texture, which she uses with the confidence of compositional arrangement.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #15, 2008.

To bring together the analytical, observational, compositional and creative features of her work while using the often difficult format of textiles, is a feat that Nash has managed to pull off. With these fascinating and at the same time haunting contained studies of both the dying leaf and the larger cycle of nature, the artist has managed to create for us a multi-focused compiled survey of the ever changing environment around us. In some respects, it is similar to one person stopping a moment in life's busy schedule, stooping down and picking a dead leaf up from the ground. That is the job of the creative, to allow us to observe a moment in time that they themselves have captured.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #16, 2008.

Dominie Nash has exhibited her work across the US, as well as in the UK. She has a comprehensive website where much more of her work can be found. The link to her site is as always, in the reference links section below.

Illustration: Dominie Nash. Big Leaf Series #17, 2008.

All images are used with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference links:

Dominie Nash website

Wen Redmond and the Complex Nature of Observation

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Trees Seen, Forest Remembered, 2008.

Of all the images and work produced by textile artist Wen Redmond, I have chosen a sequence of work produced by her over a couple of years. An observational and emotional tie to the theme of the tree links the images together, but it is perhaps her wide ranging and varied working methods that make the link all the more apparent.

Redmond is an artist that has strived to incorporate some particularly personal elements into her work. Photography seems to loom large, but it is the personal nature of observation and an emotional link with the subject that has guided the artist. An artist with a camera is a powerful combination. They tend not to randomly choose subjects that may prove useful at some point in the future, but are guided more to that of  individual elements within the environment, elements that are not always explainable individually, but become segments of a composition that may well be built up over a fairly considerable time period, or could well fit into place at an early stage of the creative process.

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Tree Forms, 2006.

By taking her own photographs and then printing them onto various textile formats, Redmond is able to control a much wider aspect of the emotional attraction that her work instils in the observer. Although only part of the process, it is an intrinsically important one. The layers of painting, dyeing, and stitching overlap the initial observation, helping to guide and support the composition so that many more aspects of Redmond's bond with the subject matter, becomes apparent.

Although abstract in nature, the narrative in each of these examples of Redmond's work is still very much linked to that of the real world around us. That the artist has chosen to show us much more and at a number of different levels, including colour, texture and dimension, allows us a glimpse at least of the thought processes, both analytical and emotional, that powered that initial photo opportunity, an opportunity that is at the root or foundation of the complex composition that has been built around and over that initial creative judgement.

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Winters Patience, 2008.

One of the most important aspects of Redmond's work is the question of observation. What is observation? How many aspects or plains of thought are involved when looking at a tree for example? By observing the complex nature of Redmond's work, we are made aware that what we observe around us contains a whole raft of layers full of meaning and context. We are aware that we are observing a tree, but so much more information is gathered at the same time. We are usually unaware of the depth of our understanding of one initial focus of our eyesight, but Redmond shows us through her work, the process that is continually being played out between observation and evaluation. Our eyes may well be open, but are we really seeing?

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Turn Around Tree, 2006.

This is one of the fundamental tools of any artist, allowing us to see what we really see. That Redmond has successfully achieved this aspect through the often difficult medium of textiles is doubly in need of praise. Her work will allow us to reach levels in which we can observe her understanding of observation.

Wen Redmond has exhibited her work since the mid-1980s and received various awards along the way. She has a comprehensive website where much more of her work can be seen and she also maintains a regular blog where those interested in her creative and thought processes, can follow her work.

Illustration: Wen Redmond. Root of the Matter. 2008.

All images provided with permission of the artist.

Reference links:

Wen Redmond website 

Wen Redmond blog