about me

Powys, Wales, United Kingdom
I am at my happiest when I'm creating something/anything....I'm of Welsh heritage, born in Canada, and have lived a quite curious life so far.....

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

and I do like a bit of art on buildings.......

I'm not really sure what the attraction is, maybe the visible texture of the bricks through the sign, just a brick quilt really (& more controlled chaos perhaps?) but I love painted posters, much preferring them to billboards, sadly you don't see many of these any more, this one is in Blackburn.


the Lion atop of the Lion Hotel in Leominster's Broad Street, wouldn't mind seeing him stretched out under a bush in my garden


Thursday, November 17, 2011

and the previous Embroidery Magazine mention for my Textile Society Undergraduate Bursary win

'Voices' a small part of my original art journal exploration


I was quite pleased when a photo of my work was used in the July/Aug Embroidery magazines small article on this years Textile Society's Student Bursary winners and runners up, even though photo for the article was not attributed to me until the Sept/Oct issue.
I felt very honoured and immensely proud to have been the 2011 Undergraduate winner. When my website is up and running I shall show much more of my work as this blog is more about the source of my designs and supplies. The other really important thing about this blog for me is being in contact with other textile minded people to balance the large amount of time spent working alone.

 click here to see the write up on all of 2011 Bursaries winners with my work as the page banner on the Student Bursary page of the Textile Society website

If you are a student you may want to check out the 2012 competiton!

Sunday, November 06, 2011

thank you Embroidery Magazine!

I was very excited to see a piece of my work included in the Embroidery Magazine in the
'Schools Out' section. Tea, the social interaction around it and its associated paraphernalia were my inspiration and I thought I'd explain the processes I used.

I came to see tea shops as social capsules, exploring them in my art journals and on loose large scale mixed media work, utlising stitch, paint, pastels, fabric, collage, tea, block printing, paper and fabric manipulation, one outcome being the piece of mixed media on calico above, the starting point for this being the cups motif, 'drawing' on the calico with tea, I also used Markal Artist Oil Paintsticks before embroidering with cotton.

I then photoshopped the image to create a repeat pattern which I had digitally printed onto a fairly heavy cotton in several colourways.  (I was thinking about an interiors fabric at this point) I took it a step further by highlighting just one rose in silk thread satin stitching. The size of the embroidered rose is 9cm tall x 10cm wide.

The buzz for me throughout all my work is amalgamating the past and present, combining both traditional & contemporary methods and examining the correlation between historical issues & of humanity.

For anyone who creates textile based (and arguably other genres) think about a subscription to Embroidery magazine, please don't just think traditional although the historical pieces covered are also of great interest and extremely useful as both inspiration and a sound source for written work. Anyone interested in contemporary methods would be depriving yourself to go without. I miss Fibrearts which sadly has fallen by the wayside but Embroidery helps heal the pain of its loss! Embroidery Magazine Nov/Dec 2011