Harrogate Knitting & Stitching Show 2022 - Textile Galleries - Part 2 - The 62 Group & The Fine Art Textiles Award

Ann Goddard - Microcosm

It's 60 years since the 62 Group was established.  Their aims were to promote textile art, to be shown in prestigious venues, to be well publicised and to be taken seriously, on a par with other fine art practices.  In this exhibition - Essence - members were asked to present work that reflected the "essence" of their textile practice.  Each work could be no larger than 30x30x30cm.  

Shuna Rendel - Cycles of Time

It was a great exhibition & here I'm sharing with you some of my favourite pieces from it.  If you head over to the 62 Group website you can watch the Essence film where the artists talk about their work.  It's well worth watching.

Maggie Henton - Kept in Place

Hannah Lamb - The Garden Within

Heather Belcher - Becoming Undone

Caren Garfen - Babes in the Wood

Debbie Lyddon - Sand & Salt Bag

Helen Banzhaf - Three in a Row

The Fine Art Textiles Award supported by the Open College of the Arts recognises the creative talents and skills of exceptional textile artists.  These are the pieces that caught my attention... 

Jane Walkley - Rhythm of the Weave 3 

Jane Walkley's piece used clay impressions of mill artefacts that were then cast in jesmonite together with mill debris. These were then included in her woven piece trying to capture the repetitive rhythm of a mill worker's daily experience.

Judith E Martin - Underfoot the Earth Divine

Judith E Martin's piece was inspired by the vast rural Canadian landscape. Her dyed, machined pieced fabrics were hand quilted, resembling a ploughed field. 

Marian Jazmik - Stems & Stalks

Marian Jazmik's abstract textile art, using a variety of synthetic materials, free machine embroidery and heat treatment, is inspired by the shapes and textures of the natural environment captured through her macro photography.

The exhibitions at the Knitting & Stitching Show are always inspirational you can read my other blog post about the textile galleries here.

Marian Jazmik & the Vlieseline Fine Art Textiles Award at the Knitting & Stitching Show - Harrogate 2019

Marian Jazmik - Gravel Path (2 vessels), Lichen 1 & Lichen 2

This is the third in my series of blogs about the 2019 Knitting & Stitching Show at Harrogate.  Marian Jazmik's exhibition - Beyond the Surface - was fascinating. Marian takes photographs on her walks on the Lancashire moors and on her travels abroad and digitally manipulates these to reveal hidden surface textures at micro and macro scales.  Fungi and lichen are of particular interest to her. Using mixed media including plastics, packaging, wood, wire and papers and using free machine embroidery & the application of heat Marian produces these amazing surface textures...

Marian Jazmik - Beyond the Surface

Marian Jazmik - Beyond the Surface

I was also blown away by the exhibits in the Vlieseline Fine Art Textiles Award.  Here are just some of the fanastic entries including one by Suzette Smart who is inspired by her local landscape, birds, animals and storytelling and using collaged fabric, machine embroidery and hand stitch...

Suzette Smart - Draw my world in words

Amans Eliane stitched letters to someone close to her, who was undergoing cancer treatment, on torn bedsheets .  These letters were never sent but knitted up - the knitting itself indicative of the time passing during this difficult period...

Amans Eliane - A toi, Lettres secrete

Ann Goddard's piece highlights the decline in the global insect population and the threat this poses to the health of the planet.  Her chrysalises, some of which have been burnt, have been formed from Ugandan bark cloth...

Ann Goddard - On the Brink

Caroline Bartlett uses cloth to embody memory, identity and experiences, folding backwards and forwards on itself as a metaphor for the degenerative and regenerative processes of life...

Caroline Bartlett - Imprint II

Using ideas from mathematics, Marilyn Rathbone has created an artwork that determines itself from the structure she has chosen, represented by dorset buttons and joined by bugle beads...

Marilyn Rathbone - Self Avoiding Walk

Susan Sami celebrates the past story and the beauty of the gradual decay of Brighton's burnt West Pier Marina using printing techniques and machine embroidery...

Susan Sami - Up in Smoke

Gaining creative inspiration and materials from her allotment, Alice Fox has produced some vessels formed round apples using stitched looping.  The apples dried and shrank leaving the vessel shapes...

Alice Fox - Apple Vessels 1-5

Hope you've enjoyed looking at at this brief selection of amazing textile art.