Karen Casper at City of York Embroiderers' Guild

Miss Coral (detail) - Karen Casper

Recently Karen Casper came to talk to the City of York Embroiderers' Guild. Working as a textile designer under the name Tulle & Candyfloss her larger pieces have a theatrical feel.  However, she also makes commercial head and wrist pieces ideal for special occasions such as weddings. 

Karen uses antique/vintage lace, tea/coffee staining, hand-dyeing and painting together with vintage jewellery and pearls.  She also recreates modern lace using free machine embroidery and dissolvable fabric.  

Karen starts by choosing a theme and follows this up with lots of research usually using books, visiting exhibitions and galleries rather than the internet.  Next, she produces lots of samples and after a process of elimination chooses the techniques she will employ on her finished product.  Her projects culminate in a photoshoot which she styles herself.  This provides images for marketing and publicity - particularly useful if the original work is sold or at an exhibition.  

Fairground themed skirt (front) - Karen Casper

Fairground themed skirt (back) - Karen Casper

This skirt is based on a vintage fairground theme and the shape is meant to represent a carousel.  Techniques used include digital printing of photos onto fabric, bleaching, quilting, embroidery and embellishment.  Garden canes and hoops are used to support it and it took 150 hours to make.

Miss Coral - Karen Casper

Miss Coral (back) - Karen Casper

The theme for the Miss Coral cape was the underwater world and the environmental issues that threaten it, with coral as the inspiration.  The cream colours represent the dead coral and the colours, the living coral. Metallic threads are used to give a twinkling under water effect.  Glow in the dark threads (Karen was sponsored by Madeira who produce such threads) are also used to represent the electric creatures from the deep.  This took 260 hours to make and has many 3D elements.
 

Ventalina - Karen Casper

Ventalina (detail) - Karen Casper

The fan is named after gorgonia ventalina which is a delicate lacy coral.  Both pieces use antique lace and Karen's modern free machine stitched lace.  They were commissioned for Manchester Museum's "Coral: Something Rich & Strange" Exhibition.

Contemporary Veil - Karen Casper

Contemporary Veil (detail) - Karen Casper

The Contemporary Veil was part of a body of work inspired by Victorian garments particularly mourning capes and veils.  This piece uses a vintage veil as a base embellised with chain and moss stitch from a Cornely embroidery machine.  The fact that the moss stitch is temporary and can be undone adds to the fragility of the piece whereas the colour suggests a sense of freedom and liberation.

It was a very interesting talk and great to be able to see Karen's work up close.

Date for your diary ...
The Triennial Exhibition of City of York Embroiderers' Guild will be held at the Guildhall, York from Friday 19 June 2015 to Sunday 21 June 2015.

From Rags to Riches: Recycled Textile Art - City Screen, York

Tuscan Hillside - Frances Owen

Ebor Ruggers currently have their 20th Anniversary Exhibition of rag rug art at City Screen in York.  It's on till 24 February 2015 so you'll have to get there quickly.  There are lots of great pieces.  You can see my selection in this blogpost ...

Heather - Angela Gray

Inspired by the dome of an Iranian mosque - Hazel Parker

Goat in Winter - Louisa Creed

Green Man - Maggie Hague

A country walk - Margaret Ramsbottom

Rag rug making is a great example of recycling and upcycling.  If you want to find out more, click on Ebor Ruggers.  Dedicated to the craft of rag rug making, they welcome visitors and new members.  If you want to join them, they meet once a month in Dunnington near York at the Reading Rooms.  

I hear there's always tea and cake available!

e-Luminating Cambridge

Colouful Fitzwilliam Museum

It just so happens that the e-Luminate Festival was on in Cambridge when I was there.  Apparently 2015 is the UN International Year of Light!  It was fun to see the City's amazing architecture lit up in weird and wonderful ways!  It's over for this year now but here's a flavour of that city's bright lights ...

King's College Chapel

Peterhouse

Senate House

Senate House

Senate House

A date for your diary next year perhaps!

Kettle's Yard House, Cambridge

Kettle's Yard House - Entrance

I discovered this little gem on a recent trip to Cambridge.  I can't believe I've never found it before especially as I used to live in Cambridge.  On the edge of the city centre, it is tucked away behind Kettle's Yard gallery which has changing exhibitions throughout the year.
 

View of Kettle's Yard House from the Gallery

Now owned by Cambridge University, it was the home of Jim Ede from the late 50s until the early 70s.  Jim was a curator at the Tate Gallery, London in the 1920s & 1930s and as a result met and befriended many artists.  Over the years he amassed an astonishing collection of 20th century art.  I've never seen so many paintings by Alfred Wallis (a personal favourite)!  They are displayed without labels throughout his house amongst his collections of natural objects and other works of applied art.  It is kept largely as it was when he lived there with his wife, Helen.  You are encouraged to sit in the chairs and see the art as he would have viewed it. It is a personal curation of his taste over a particular period displayed how he wished it to be experienced.  There are works by Ben & Winifred Nicholson, Christoper Wood, Willian Congdon, Joan Miro, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Italo Valenti, Henri Moore, Barbara Hepworth & others.  

There's also an amazing spiral of almost spherical pebbles that came from a beach in Norfolk - I want to go there too!

It's fantastic, it's free and on Fridays one of the grand pianos is used for lunchtime concerts.

Kettle's Yard Gallery

If that's not enough you can pop across the courtyard and take a look in Kettle's Yard Gallery and shop.  The current exhibition is Beauty and Revolution: The Poetry and Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay

This place is a gem - go see!

Granary Square - Kings Cross, London

Granary Square + Winter Sun Project

Next time you are near Kings Cross with a bit of time to spare go and take a look at Granary Square.  You'll find the House of Illustration (a gallery of illustration), Central St Martins (part of University of the Arts, London), Word on the Water (a book shop on a barge), Winter Sun (a light installation & social space) and lots of restaurants.

You get the view above from the viewing platform just opposite Granary Square where you can also see back down to Kings Cross ...

View to Kings Cross

read a poem ...

Steel Birds by Kathy Henderson

read about the Winter Sun project ...

Winter Sun Info

 Then you can check out the bookbarge ...

Word on the Water Bookbarge

Word on the Water Bookbarge

before going to Winter Sun to make some ghostly images on the screens ...

Ghostly images at Winter Sun

More ghostly images at Winter Sun

and then whatever takes your fancy - worth a look!

Katharina Fritsch - Blue Cockerel, 2013 - Trafalgar Square, London

Katharina Fritsch - Cock, 2013

Don't know if I haven't been to Trafalgar Square since July 2013 but I have only recently spotted Katharina Fritsch's ultramarine blue cockerel on the fourth plinth.  It's made from glass fibre reinforced polyester resin on a stainless steel supporting structure. Standing 4.72m high, it weighs over 800kg.  

Katharina Fritsch - Cock, 2013

Katharina Fritsch - Cock, 2013

Good job they're not that size in real life -  that'd be a bit scary!

You can read more about it here.  Go see it won't be there much longer.

Richard Tuttle - I Don't Know. The Weave of Textile Language - Tate Modern

 

Richard Tuttle - Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London

Currently exhibiting in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London, Richard Tuttle is an Amercan artist for whom art is an adventure.  He is also a collector of textiles from around the world and is fascinated by weaving. He is interested in the different techniques and technologies that different cultures use to create their textiles.
 

Richard Tuttle - Detail of central section

This hanging structure is the largest sculpture Tuttle has ever made.  It uses about 2,500 sq metres of fabric hanging from a plywood frame 24 metres long and 12 metres high.  It looks like two wings separated by a large red covered structure.

Richard Tuttle

It is supposed to relate to Tuttle's memories of the Vietnam war (he had wanted to be a pilot until he realised his role would be to drop bombs) and to raise the issue of genocide in the 20th Century and to comment on the separation of the mechanical (e.g. large scale industrial textile production) and the human (e.g. "art-making").
 

Richard Tuttle

The three fabrics were woven by Garden Silks Mills Ltd in Surat, India.  They are a combination of natural and man-made fibres, dyed to the bright colours & textures specified by Tuttle.  I could see the red and orange/yellow fabric quite clearly.  I read there was some midnight blue too but I couldn't see it.

Richard Tuttle - Holes in the red fabric

When close up you can see that the red fabric has a pattern of small holes at regular intervals.

On until 6 April 2015, you can read more here.  I think, unusually, it's better in the photos than in real life.  Not quite as exciting as some of the other Turbine Hall exhibits but if you are in the vicinity, then take a look!