Harland Miller at York Art Gallery

Harland Miller - Bad Weather Painting 1

Hopefully in the fullness of time you will be able to see Harland Miller's exhibition at York Art Gallery once it re-opens.  However if you didn't get a chance to go before the gallery closed, or if York would always be too far to visit, you may want a taster of what's on show, so here's some pics and info to keep you going...

Born in York in the 1960s, Miller spent his formative years in Yorkshire. He combines his love of text and abstraction to devise book covers in recognisable and humorous formats.

Harland Miller - Bridlington - Something Tells Me Nothing's Going To Happen Tonight

His Pelican Bad Weather paintings relate to towns and cities in the north of England particularly the Yorkshire coast, where the weather just can't be guaranteed...

Harland Miller - Bad Weather Painting 3

Harland Miller - Bad Weather Painting 2

Miller's Letter Paintings draw on his study of the history of lettering and illuminated manuscripts and have a pop art vibe...

Harland Miller - If

Harland Miller - Ace

Inspired by a box of Penguin books outside an English bookshop in Paris, Miller began painting graphic covers in the 1990s with newly invented titles, aiming also to evoke in the painting the secondhand dog eared look of the books.

Harland Miller - Rags to Polyester - My Story

Harland Miller - Death, What's In It For Me?

Miller's work, hovering between humour and despair, hope and disappointment is very entertaining - well worth a look!

Gillian Lowndes: On the Edge at CoCA, York Art Gallery

Gillian Lowndes - Collage With Bathroom Tile

Gillian Lowndes exhibition "On the Edge" at the Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA) at York Art Gallery is on until May 2020.  Lowndes (1936-2010) is considered to be the most radical ceramicist of the 20th Century.

Gillian Lowndes - Brick Bag With Pot Shards

From the 1970s she developed mixed media 3D "collages" using discarded man-made objects and natural materials combined with latex, fibreglass and clay which were then fired in a kiln.  The resulting elements were then glued or wired together to create her compositions...

Gillian Lowndes - Corrugated Composition (Bird)

Gillian Lowndes - Collage With Tomato Root

Gillian Lowndes - Hooks

If you like interesting assemblages, this is the exhibition for you!

Traces at New Brewery Arts, Cirencester

Sara Impey - Negative Spaces, Positive Times (detail)

If you happen to be in the Cotswolds before 15 March 2020 pop into New Brewery Arts in Cirencester and take a look at Traces.  This exhibition by Quilt Art, a group of international textile artists, explores the themes of memory and the power of stitch.  The group was founded in Britain in 1985 to promote the quilt as an art form. Not all work conforms to the traditional definition of a quilt but all work exhibits the artists' united passion for stitch, fabric, colour and texture and the limitless posibilities of the textile surface.  Here is a sample of the work on show...

Charlotte Yde - The Missed Ones

Charlotte Yde - The Missed Ones (detail)

Cherilyn Martin - Silent Dialogue #2

Fenella Davies - Sea Fret

Jette Clover - Cry Me a River

Karina Thompson - Recovery Quilt 2-2018 (detail)

Sara Impey - Negative Spaces, Positive Times

Sue Hotchkis - Breakdown

Sue Hotchkis - Breakdown detail

New Brewery Arts in Cirencester is a great place to visit.  It has a fab cafe, an interesting craft shop and varied exhibitions.  It is adjacent to a large car park if visiting by car.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day from Hippystitch

I'm wishing you all love on Valentine's Day!  This year I made a different sort of Valentine's Day card.  It's mixed media, 3D and includes some free machine embroidery. Hope you like it.

Have a great day!

Mermaids, Femmes Fatales & Trees at The Ropewalk

Mermaid Brooch

Just a quick update to let you know that a delivery of mermaid & femmes fatales brooches has arrived at The Ropewalk in Barton upon Humber...

Femme Fatale Brooch

And for the first time a forest of knitted deciduous and conifer tree brooches has also sprung up there...

Deciduous & Conifer Knitted Tree Brooches

So go take a look! The Ropewalk's a great place with lovely things to buy in the Craft Gallery, interesting exhibitions, a good cafe & a great garden with sculptures.  You can even find out all about the history of rope making at the Barton Ropery in the Ropewalk Museum.  The building has a characteristic ropewalk from its ropemaking days - hence the name!

Jen Cable, Sisse Fog Odgaard & Bradford School of Art at the Knitting & Stitching Show - Harrogate 2019

Jen Cable - Who blazed your trail?

Jen Cable's exhibition "An Ideal Woman?" employs traditional women's  textile techniques in a contemporary way to reflect on society's views of women's acceptable conduct.  In doing so she highlights how such expectations limit the role and behaviour of women.  In "Who blazed your trail?" the depiction of a burnt bra represents an image of empowerment inspired by the protest marches of the 1960s & 1970s.    

Jen Cable - Some day my prince will come

In "Some day my prince will come" Jen is reflecting on the industrious, servile women of fairy tales e.g the miller's daughter who gets to marry the king when she can spin straw into gold and wonders what reward would result from being able to turn bark and petals into cushions.

Jen Cable - So much more to give

"So much more to give" references Rapunzel's conditioning which meant she failed to realise she could use her own hair as a means of escape.  It asks why can't we accept individuals as they are, rather than expecting them to conform to a single norm.

 

Sisse Fog Odgaard - #Unfinished

 
Sisse Fog Odgaard's #Unfinished was an amazing display of six colourful life rafts made up of more than 2,000 pieces of unfinished knitting, collected over a period of 6 months. Sisse cut the pieces and stitched them onto a base of discarded parachutes and covered the joints with a total of 2.5 km of French knitting. Her knitting machine was powered by a lego motor! Sisse hopes to inspire us to let go of preconceived ideas of perfection and to speak openly of the things we aren't so proud of.  "When we dare to talk about our mistakes, it sets us free". You can watch a video of the project here.

Lorna Muir - HNC Contemporary Constructed Textiles

Lorna Muir, from Bradford School of Art, takes inspiration from Martin Parr's photograph collection The Non- Conformists which looks at farming and chapel communities in the Upper Calder Valley.  Her collection is an interpretion of what Charlie & Sarah Hannah Greenwood, a brother and sister who farmed at Thurrish Farm and worshipped at Crimsworth Dean Methodist Chapel, would wear at work, home and for worship. Items shown are envisaged as what Charlie would wear for work and what Sarah Hannah would wear to the Chapel anniversary, a special occasion.

Nicola Green - HNC Fashion & Textiles

Nicola Green, also from Bradford School of Art, has produced her Urban Pattern collection inspired by the Yorkshire urban landscape.  Her pieces, designed for a therapy seting for young people, have a colour palette and texture that it is hoped will have a positive impact on mental wellbeing.

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.