Making As Learning - The Sixty Two Group - Salt's Mill, Saltaire

Jae Maries - Widening Horizons

 

The Sixty Two Group's recent exhibition Making as Learning has now finished in the roof space at Salt's Mill in Saltaire.  We are told that "The theme 'Making as Learning' was inspired by and dedicated to former 62 Group member Audrey Walker MBE (1928-2020), both as an educator and artist.  The exhibition explores the role of making and learning in our creative practice.  Members interrogate their textile practices, unravelling working processes and inspirations as part of a continuing journey of discovery." 

Jan Beaney - Transience

There was some great work on display and here are just some of my top picks.  I am drawn to mixed media pieces, assemblages and texture so expect to see a preponderance of such works.

Jae Maries's shoreline scene (top image) experiments with new techniques, materials and approaches to her textile art.  Off cuts from a visual diary and old work make up the boardwalk. I love the movement and texture in this piece.

Jan Beaney's Transience (above) is inspired by Charmouth beach and the eroding and etched stone surfaces revealed at low tide.  You just want to run your hands over this to feel the uneven surfaces.

Ann Goddard - Collection #2 (Collaged Constructions) detail

Ann makes constructions from rusty objects, natural materials, recycled artworks and other items from her stash.  She experiments with these materials and I am fascinated by the results.

Eszter Bornemisza - Delve and Discover

Eszter experiemnts with new materials and techniques as a matter of course to turn her ideas into something tangible.  Distortion, layering and transparency are all techniques employed in her joined up samples here.

Gavin Fry - Unfinished Symphony II

Gavin's assemblage of handstitching and found objects is an expression of the foregrounding of touch over practicality.  This is a particularly pleasing, curious piece.

Jane McKeating - Flight Path

Jane McKeating's work is a connection between the story she is telling (what is happening in the world beneath a flight path) and the materials she chooses to experiment with to tell it (roller blind fabric, printing, gouache and inks)

Hannah Lamb - Inheritance

Hannah's cyanotypes and textile making is something she has learned through making, through watching others, through doing and undoing to gain knowledge which she can now pass on to her students whilst also recognising that she can also learn things from them.

Helen Yardley - Cerise Wall Felt & Cornish Grey Wall Felt

Helen Yardley's colourful wall felts are decorative acoustic wallhangings inspired by Matisse's collage with added paint, print and stitch.  I love the stitched elements of these simple abstract pieces.  They are quite wonderful.

Debbie Lydon - Findings (out)

Debbie Lydon collects found objects with which she experiments through manipulation, treatments and reworking.  They may be stitched, waxed, painted, glued, bound, suspended or contained and remain her learning experiments rather than finished pieces.  I love them.

Shuna Rendel - Spinning out of control

Experimenting with apple prunings, bark and maize husks, Shuna has experimented with her materials to create a piece inspired by the mill setting in which it is exhibited.  She is hoping to evoke a picture of bobbins of wool with trailing threads.

Sue Stone - Integrated detail

Sue's piece, Integrated, is a collage of digital prints of previous works which have then been worked on with hand and machine stitching to provide extra detail. A combination of traditional and modern techniques, they are hung so you can see this stitching clearly on the reverse as another layer, and almost another work. 

Lucy Brown - Loss (Ball 'n' Tress) detail

Made from the artist's hand spun hair tresses and handmade hairballs, Lucy Brown's piece references the mill's spinning room.  In fact Lucy taught herself to spin using her own hair to create the piece.

A selection of pieces from this exhibition will be on display at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate so you may have seen them there if you missed them at Salt's Mill.

York Makers Winter Fair - Saturday 23 November 2024

Designed by Lucy Monkman

 

It's that time of year again, the York Makers Winter Fair will soon be here.  It's a lovely event with lots of interesting local artists and makers who will be exhibiting.  There will be all sorts of jewellery, textiles, art, cards and prints, ceramics, clothing, leather goods, candles, stained glass, felted items, wooden birds and animals, wildlife sculptures in paper clay and baked goods. Entry is free and there's a cafe.  It's all happening at Clements Hall, Nunthorpe Road, York, YO23 1BW on Saturday 23 November 2024 from 10am to 4pm.  Do come along!

Hippystitch Fabric Necklaces

I shall be there and I thought I'd give you a sneaky peak at some of the things I'll be bringing.  I will, of course, have lots of fabric necklaces in gorgeous Liberty prints.  I have some new vintage tin brooches...

Vintage tin brooches

I also have a large range of new button brooches...

Hippystitch mother of pearl button brooches with ceramic thread labels

Hippystitch new vintage button brooches

Hippystitch button brooches for dog lovers

Hippystitch etched button brooches with mother of pearl

Hippystitch button brooches with stitching

And because Christmas is on the horizon and you might have some parties lined up...

Hippystitch button brooches with a touch of gold and silver

or you might want something with a nod to the festive season but that you can wear all year round...

Hippystitch star button brooches

and if you want something super colourful...

Hippystitch flower button brooches

I will have my flower button bracelets...

Hippystitch flower button bracelets

Not to mention stitched cords, which have a myriad of uses...

Hippystitch Stitched Cords

And more, including some felt necklaces...  

Hippystitch Felt Necklace

Do come along there'll be lots to choose from.

Supporter of the JUST A CARD campaign.

Material Worlds: Contemporary Artists and Textiles - Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre

Rae-Yen Song - song dynasty

On until Sunday 15 December 2024 at the Mead Gallery in Warwick Arts Centre, this exhibition features 15 UK based artists who use textiles in their art in interesting or radical ways.  It is a Hayward Gallery touring exhibition curated by artist Caroline Achaintre.  Here is my selection of the works...

Song dynasty (above) relates to family and identity and was made by Rae-Yen Song for five members of the Song family.  The costume resembles a green, scaly, conjoined creature.  We are told it is a futuristic garment where family, memory and imagination converge.

These beautiful tapestries (below) by Yelena Popova are woven on a mechanised Jacquard loom from her digital designs.  Although seemingly abstract they are based on her research into first generation nuclear power plants around the UK...

Yelena Popova - Keepsafe l & ll

Anna Perach used a rug tufting technique to create her Venus which can also be worn as a costume.  Her reference point for this is the 18th century hyper-real waxwork models of women's anatomy, designed for examination and disassembly for the study of anatomy. They were called "anatomical Venuses".  Her work relates to gender issues and the partriarchy...

Anna Perach - Venus

Paul Maheke's pieces are based on his drawings that have been bleached into fabric.  The drawings were loosely based on a fortune telling session using coffee grounds. We are told much of his work relates to what's absent, what's unseen and what's left untold...

Paul Maheke - We Took a Sip from the Devil's Cup

Of Marc Camille Chaimowicz's three pieces that are shown here, it is Dual that appealed to me particularly.  Each item can either be a chair or a sort of chaise longue depending whether they are upright or horizontal.  Chaimowicz liked to explore dualities and the fluidity of identity.  I think this is ingenius...

Marc Camille Chaimowicz - Dual, Malevolent Coat Hook, Cluny (wallpaper)

Alexandre da Cunha's piece looks like a geometric hanging but is in fact made from umbrellas. I think this gives it added interest. Da Cunha likes to collect everyday objects to use in his art.  He hopes that once you realise what his art is made from it will prompt you to question where the items come from, who made them and how they are used...

Alexandre da Cunha - Arena

Tenant of Culture or Henrickje Schimmel, who I have written about before here, disassembles and reassembles fashion items with a view to looking into supply chains and questioning design intentions...

Tenant of Culture - Puzzlecut Boot Brown 

Tonico Lemos Auad was known initially for making sculptures of animals using carpet fluff and hairspray.  I was really hoping to see one of these as I couldn't quite imagine it but there was only a photographic print...

Tonico Lemos Auad - Fox (Moonbeam Carpet)

He now makes more traditional woven works based on landscape and architectural forms...

Tonico Lemos Auad - Paisagem Vermelha (Red Landscape)

I found the construction of Paloma Proudfoot's piece interesting as a combination of ceramic and textile. Proudfoot explores the relationship between the body and the garment and how that affects our perceptions of identity and power..

Paloma Proudfoot - The Mannequins Reply (detail)

In the Make Space, designed for engagement with visitors, Mixed Rage Collective had made a Sticks and Stones piece using wrapping techniques, cord and pompoms which I thought was very effective. It relates to the lived experience of being "othered" - lack of representation, daily microaggressions and displacement felt by people of mixed ethnicities.  I liked some of the messages visitors had left behind too.

Mixed Rage Collective & the Community

There is a very small cafe and dining area in the Arts Centre and if you have parked in one of the nearby carparks you can pay for your parking at a machine near the entrance of the Arts Centre.  The parking app and parking website don't appear to work but you will need your car registration number to pay!

Standedge Tunnel, Marsden

Huddersfield Narrow Canal

This is a bit of departure for me.  My blogposts are usually about what I've been making, the exhibitions I've seen or the workshops I've attended or given.  However, apart from mixed media, textiles and art more generally, I also have a penchant for civil engineering projects.  I particularly like bridges but recently I have visited a tunnel.  And not just any tunnel, but the Standedge Tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal at Marsden, which is near Huddersfield.  The tunnel is the longest, highest, deepest tunnel in Britain.  It is 3.5 miles long (5.2km) at a height of 645 feet (196.6m) above sea level and 638 feet (194.5 m) below ground.  

View of the Standedge Tunnel at Marsden

In 1794 there was an Act or Parliament authorising the construction of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.  The canal is a little less than 20 miles long and runs from Huddersfield to the Ashton Canal in Ashton-under-Lyne.  It was completed in 1799 apart from the Standedge Tunnel and the flight of locks at Diggle, which is at the other end of the tunnel from Marsden.  

Standedge Tunnel Entrance

The Standedge Tunnel, which goes under the Pennines, wasn't completed until 1811. It took 16 years to complete.  The original engineer on the project was Benjamin Outram but he resigned after 5 years when the tunnel wasn't finished.  Thomas Telford took over and established that the two tunnels (the tunnel was being dug from both the Marsden and Diggle ends) were not going to meet in the middle.  He designed a gradual S-bend in the middle to get the two sides to join up.  That's also why you can't see light at the end of the tunnel.  It took 2500 navvies (short for navigators), who were manual labourers, to build the tunnel.  More than 50 died in the process.

Standedge Tunnel showing the supporting brickwork put in after the railway tunnel was built

It's a very narrow tunnel and there is no towpath so the barges had to be legged through the tunnel. A legger is someone who legs a canal boat through a tunnel by propelling it along by walking their legs along the tunnel walls whilst lying on a board on the barge.  To get through the Standedge Tunnel in this way could take upto 4 hours depending on the cargo and the weight of the boat.  Even today, with motors, it takes 1.5-2 hours to get a barge through.  Today, the boats have to be measured by the Canal & River Trust to make sure they will fit and a chaperone travels with them to make sure they get through safely. Barges can't be more than 6 feet 10 inches wide, 6 feet 2 inches in height above water with a draught below the water of no more than 3 feet 3 inches. You have to make an appointment to travel through the tunnel.  It's a one way system as there are no passing places.  In the past upto 40 boats a day might go through.

The tunnel is very narrow.
The barge takes up almost all the space

When the lights aren't on it's pitch black in the tunnel

There are also 3 adjacent railway tunnels.  Two to the left of the canal tunnel which are no longer in rail use, and the current two track mainline tunnel on the right.  The ventilation shafts for the canal also serve the railway tunnels and all the tunnels are connected by adits (horizontal passages) so that you can get between the tunnels.  The tracks have been removed in the middle railway tunnel and emergency vehicles can be driven through it, should the need arise.  When the mainline tunnel was being blasted this destabilised the canal tunnel and brick supports had to be built in parts of the tunnel to shore it up.  The rest of the canal tunnel is bare rock.

One of the Tunnel Adits

Regular traffic through the tunnel ceased in 1913 and the canal was abandoned in 1944 by an Act of Parliament. Restoration began in the 1980s and the Canal reopened in 2001.  You can now book a short trip into the tunnel.  It's fascinating and if you sit at the front of the boat, prepare to take a shower as you pass under one of the 7 ventilation shafts which are pouring with water! 

There's an interesting video about the tunnel and travelling through it by Foxes Afloat on YouTube here.

You can get to Marsden by train, although there are lots of steps to get out of the station and there is a boat that will take you to the Standedge Tunnel if you don't want to, or can't walk, along the tow path. There is also a Visitor Centre in the old canal warehouse near the mouth of the tunnel. Marsden itself is an attractive small town with several cafes and restaurants.  Definitely worth a visit!

Monet at York Art Gallery

Claude Monet - The Water-Lily Pond - 1899

 

As part of the celebrations of the National Gallery's 200th year, a number of its famous works have been loaned, from London, to regional galleries.  The Water-Lily Pond, painted in 1899, by Claude Monet (1840-1926) came north and was central to an exhibition at York Art Gallery from May to September 2024.

The picture, which is a cropped view with loads of texture from the thick brush strokes, depicts Monet's much loved water garden at his house in Giverny in France.  Monet was a founder of Impressionism, a 19th Century art movement concerned with painting ordinary subjects, often outdoors, accurately depicting light to create a picture that caught the essence of a scene rather than an accurate depiction.

Having imagined I had plenty of time to see this exhibition, I only managed to get there on the final day.  I don't think I was the only one who was in that position, as all the online tickets had sold out and there was a queue to get in!

Claude Monet - The Water-Lily Pond
Details showing texture

There was a short film of Monet painting in his garden at Giverny.  What struck me most about this was the fact he was smoking while painting and his cigarette had an very long end of ash which I kept expecting to see fall onto his paint palette.  Added texture - who knows?

Camille Corot
The Convent of Sant'onofrio on the Janiculum, Rome
1826

To accompany the exhibition there were works by artists who led the way in painting in the open air, as Monet did and also artists who were influenced by Monet's work and then new work by contemporary artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan, who was inspired by both Monet's The Water-Lily Pond and by the Japanese woodblock prints of which he was so fond.

Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz de la Pena
The Feast at Fontainebleau - 1865-70

Diaz (1807-1876) not only painted outdoors but was a core member of the Barbizon School, who were a group of painters who gathered near the village of Barbizon to paint the Forest of Fontainebleau.

Monet had a fondness for Japanese woodblock prints.  This one is by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858)...

Utagawa Hiroshige
Shimotsuke Province: Mount Nikko, Urami Waterfall - 1853 

Ethel Walker (1861-1951) was inspired by the Impressionist Exhibitions she visited in Paris and this influenced her style...

Ethel Walker - Landscape at Robin Hood's Bay - 1942-48

It was also interesting to see that the canvas had been stitched together...

Ethel Walker - Landscape at Robin Hood's Bay detail

Leticia Marion Hamilton (1878-1964) was also influenced by the Impressionists, evidenced by this unusual view of Ouse Bridge and her painted textures ...

Leticia Marion Hamilton - Ouse Bridge, York - 1925-31

The Michaela Yearwood-Dan: Una Sinfonia series of paintings were alive with colour and texture incorporating ceramic petals and beads.  She took the seasons as her starting point and Monet's fascination with the changing quality of light.

I loved these large colourful canvases...

Michaela Yearwood-Dan
When the green turns to gold, I settle in your nook

Michaela Yearwood-Dan - Ready, Steady, GO!

Her paintings included ceramic flower petals...

Michaela Yearwood-Dan
Ready, Steady, GO! - detail

and beads...

Michaela Yearwood-Dan
Will you still love me tomorrow?

We are told that Michaela Yearwood-Dan's work draws on a range of influences: Blackness, queerness, femininity healing rituals and carnival culture and that she endeavours to build spaces of community, abundance and joy.  I certainly found her work very joyful.

There was lots more to see at the York Art Gallery including some particularly fine work by women artists.  In addition there is a large selection of British Studio Ceramics in the Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA) which is on the first floor.  I particularly liked this chap (see above) but I didn't catch his name.