Zoom: Sunflowers

I have been sewing all my life and I have always enjoyed fabric. I marvel at the feel of a piece of cloth, the colours and patterns and how it drapes and shapes.

I enjoy making my own fabrics, combining different techniques such as dyeing, printing, stencilling, painting - whatever it takes to get the look and feel that I am after. I usually work with strong and warm colours as they remind me of the warmth of spring and summer.

A1

A3

A5

The inspiration for these three pieces was a bunch of sunflowers received from a friend. I wanted to capture the feel of a field of sunflowers as well as having a close-up look at the detail of this cheerful flower.

It is inspiring to work with other textile artists. Zoom, our first group challenge shows how we work in very different ways yet learn and inspire each other.

Merete
These pieces have been chosen to hang as part of the EquilARTeral exhibition at Slough Museum from the 3rd of February, 2010 for one month.

Recent Challenges

So far, we have had 3 challenges in the EquilARTeral group.

The first challenge was Zoom. The idea was to work with our own choice of subject but in large, medium and small sizes, ‘zooming-in’ or ‘zooming-out’. Some chose literal subject matter and some chose to depict conceptual ideas. We opted to use A1, A3, and A5 for the sizes of the pieces.

The second challenge was Connect-Disconnect. Again, the responses were sometimes literal and sometimes conceptual. We had enjoyed the series of different sizes so well for Zoom, that we decided to do a similar thing with A2, A4, and A6.

Our current project is based on the recent find of the Staffordshire Hoard. A treasure trove of items from Anglo-Saxon times discovered by a metal detectorist. Here is a video showing some of the items as they were discovered.

Staffordshire hoard excavation from Dan Pett on Vimeo.

We are nearly at the point where we will have photos of our responses to the Staffordshire Hoard find. What we have done differently this time, is to create work which we have encorporated into painted, textured artist canvas. This has been a step beyond our normal way of working, and all of us are enjoying the journey.

The posts to follow this will show work from the various challenges the group has done.

Exhibition – Slough Museum

EquilARTeral group have been invited to exhibit at Ideas Bank, a visual arts exhibition organised by Slough Museum. The group have been hoping to show together at some point, and we have suddenly been given the opportunity. Sandy Snowden, Merete Hawkins and I are planning to hang our 'Zoom' series of pieces on Tuesday. The exhibition opens on Wednesday and will be up for the whole of February.