It was a milestone for our branch this week when 25 members took part in our first Zoom meeting. Fortunately everything went like clockwork and Anne Jackson spoke to the group from her home in Devon. She was born in New York but her father was Scottish so she decided to read Medieval History at St Andrews and has lived in the UK ever since. After graduating Anne took a post graduate course in Constructed Textiles at Middlesex.
Anne’s talk was entitled “Certaine Wytches: Fear, Myth & Magic” and she spoke about her Witchcraft Series which is an ongoing project. She has exhibited in Latvia, Sweden, Denmark, the USA as well as this country and last year she had a one woman show at Bovey Tracey, Devon. Anne has always been interested in witches and spends time at exhibitions interacting with the public to hear their stories which often give her more leads to follow. We were shown images of her wall hangings which tell stories of the Devon Witches, Ursula Kempe, Alice & Febey Hunt, Grace Thomas and Elizabeth Style together with spells and magical symbols. Anne then went on to explain that she paints a cartoon of her design and this acts as a guide when she creates her knotted tapestry. There is a useful video on Anne’s website to show the construction and also lots more images and explanations of her work
https://www.annejackson.co.uk/ – Home page
https://www.annejackson.co.uk/making-videos/ construction of tapestries
Thank you Anne for an interesting and thought provoking talk. Hopefully one day soon we will be able to see your amazing tapestries for ourselves! Thank you also for kindly allowing us to put these images on our blog.
We are continuing to share images of members work which I hope everyone will enjoy.
Message from Clare
Finished piece after the Creative Textile day with Lindsay
Message from Robina
I don’t seem to be sewing very much these days but I’m enjoying painting and making patterns on paper or fabric. My latest is some free painting onto silk using the Derwent ink /dye sticks . I was inspired by a photo of a bee orchid which grew in the lawn of my grand daughter this year. For the orchid I used the transfer dyes, but for the rest I used my sketches from our summer garden this year.
Other wise I keep doing butterflies!!
Message from Ros
I am continuing with my Sue Stone course. It has been a roller coaster of a month because I chose the famous National Geographic Afghan girl, photographed by Steve McCurry as the image for my next challenge. I spent a good week on this piece and then got cold feet – where did I stand with regard to copyright? I asked for advice on our FB page and it was suggested that it was better to use your own photographs unless you were prepared not to post the finished work on social media or display it at an exhibition. After sleeping on the news I decided to unpick it and start again using an image of my own – big learning curve.
This challenge was quite demanding because we were asked to cover the complete area in stitch. Here is the little girl I photographed several years ago on the back of her father’s motorbike on the way to school in Gondal, Gujarat. I was pleased I met the brief but not sure I would want to do this type of project again!
Message from Ann S
These are some small textile fragments – due to be exhibited at Wagon Yard Gallery’s, Christmas exhibition which is now postponed until December 5th !
That’s all for this month. As we start the second lockdown I wish everyone “happy stitching” and we look forward to our amazing Zoom speaker in December – Alice Kettle.
Ros