lessons

This is G my hairdresser, we have been trading  for years. On my last trip back to Canada I made G this felted piece.  I wanted to combine the wild landscape of Canada with the manicured landscape of the UK.  You can see the UK side.  I was thinking about all those amazing stone walls. The problem is this is the only image I have of this piece because I didn't take any pictures.  I have done this before and always regret it.
I have a dress in the design faze working with the same motif. This time I will document it, lesson learnt I hope.  
The materials are merino, silk, camel and alpaca.

Drawing with felt

I've been making more shoelace felt recently. There's something about making an object out of a continuous thread.

 felted neck piece, acid dyed merino
felted caplet, merino dyed in arbutus bark

World of Threads Festival

Here is an image of the piece I did for the De rerum natura (On The Nature of Things) at the World of Threads Festival. Check out the website for more images some really great work in a really beautifully curated show by Gareth Bate. http://www.worldofthreadsfestival.com/artwork_pages/2012/de_rerum_natura_joshua_creek_12.html

I Can Hear The Trees Sing

This piece is in the De rerum natura ( On The Nature of Things) at Joshua Creek Heritage Arts Center

 Here is the link to the show

http://www.worldofthreadsfestival.com/index.html



 artist statement


This piece is rooted in my sensory memory of the landscape I have come to call home: wild tenacious, full of vibrancy, textured and rich in colour. It was these very things that at first terrified me about the Canadian Landscape. Coming from a land of manicured parks and gardens where that  wildness is contained neatly in museum boxes to be viewed from a distance. I have since come to relish the wildness gulping in great breaths of it.

Having decided to take a long visit back to England it is the unrestrained land I find myself missing: witnessing history thru trees, mountains the shape and layer of a river bed.

Looking at Emily Carr with fresh eyes her dripping green hued forests filled with ghosts and spirits: I
find myself longing to breath in the mossy damp earth and feel the moist air on my cheeks.

This piece is my response to this desire to find a grassy knoll to lay my head and to rub my hands into the green carpeted land.

The practice of felt making brings my senses closer to this desire: working with the textures of wool and silk: the physicality of working the fibers into material. Dyeing and shibori enable me to mark the cloth leaving the path I have just traveled.
     

remnants

just started working on a new project using remnants

This piece ' I Can Hear The Trees Sing' has been accepted into the show  De rerum nataura (On The Nature of Things)  at this years World of Threads Festival. : http://www.worldofthreadsfestival.com
at Joshua Creek Heritage Arts Center in  Oakville, Ontario, Canada, Nov 2 - 18.  I am really excited to be included with such amazing textile artists from around the world. All of the shows look amazing.
I made this piece in response to moving back to England feeling the need to find a mossy shelter in the woods.

alpaca weather

mound#1
i am working on a series of textile mounds
this piece was in the "animal fibers: art informs shibori"
8th international shibori symposium in hong kong 2011