Stroud Textiles

Today a tremendous visit to Stroud and Nailsworth to see some of the work on show in the Stroud International Textiles exhibition and in the accompanying textiles artists studios trail.  Running at the same time is the SITE Stroud artists festival and arts trail.  I went with friends Glen and Tony Eastman, and we tried to see as much as we could,  but the trails extend way beyond Stroud and Nailsworth and there was a lot we couldn't manage in a single day's visit.  However, the weather was fabulous, an especial treat after the relentless rain of the past few weeks, and the towns were in festive mood, probably more because of the sun than the art.  We saw some wonderful work.

First off was the main exhibition, Select Pairings II, Conversations and Collaborations, at the Stroud Museum.  Here the festival had paired up textile artists with other creatives, and invited them to work together to produce new pieces.  The results were exciting and innovative, showing the strength and diversity of individual artists' work, and the sometimes surprising things which can happen when unusual couplings of talent are made.  I liked all of it  but the things which particularly caught my attention included the combined textile and ceramic work where Alice Kettle's stitch drawings on linen were complemented by Helen Felcey's understated porcelain vessels, so the whole thing looked like a table set for a meal. like this....

This image, and more, from Alice Kettle's website here.

In similar vein, I also liked the work by Sharon Blakey and Ismini Samanidou, who combined delicate fabric, printed with semi-legible text, alongside cast replicas of table cutlery, and the imprint of these into paper.  The combination of object, stitch, line and texture was compelling but very simple, and referred, I think, to the memory and ritual stored up in shared meals, shared experiences across cultures.

One example is here... 

The image is taken from Sharon Blakey's MMU website entry  here, where there is more about her work.

Another very interesting pairing was that between textile artist Jane McKeating (website link here) and Jilly Morris (website link here) who works with enamel and drawing as well as stitch.  They produced a series of curled forms, each quite small and embellished with bold drawn or stitched lines and wrapped threads.  My photo doesn't do the work justice but gives a flavour of their collaboration.

There was much to admire in the exhibition, more information on the SIT website here.

Then into Stroud to visit some of the open studios in the textile and arts trails.  There were separate printed guide books for each, beautifully presented but lacking in decent maps, so we wandered about a bit, and managed to completely miss some of the out-of-town venues because the map was so poor, and/or because the signage on the road was unclear.  That aside, the information about artists was good, and we found the main sites  we wanted to see.

The Stroud Valley Arts (SVA) building in John Street was a treasure trove.  I particularly liked the textile studio work, including particularly the felt by Anne Rogers, and the hand printed or hand-painted textiles by Jenny Bicalt.  

I was fascinated by the work of Emily Joy (website here, from where the photo next was copied) who had built a kind of double ended printing machine out of two old-fashioned laundry mangles, one end could take and print type, the other end could print a kind of braille.  

She had used this to print and over print on a continuous loop of paper, so that the text and the braille eventually almost obscured each other, and the meaning (or memory) was distorted and obliterated.  I thought this had big resonances for the work I'm doing in relation to deconstructing and obliterating the text of my old working life.  It also resonated with some of the work seen in the Lost in Lace show in Birmingham earlier this year.  

Upstairs there were several other artists whose drawings and paintings were very striking, including Bill Jones (link here) whose indian ink drawings were very appealing, reminding me of John Piper's Welsh landscapes seen recently in Cardiff; and Zoe Heath (link here) whose small paintings and drawings, some incorporating found objects or papers, and some using script or nearly-script, were quite arresting.   Lots more about all of them and more on the SVA website here.

Heading out of Stroud we made a detour and stumbled across an open studio hosted by Sophia Hughes and Anne James, whose sculptural forms and abstract acrylics, and ceramics, respectively, were well presented in an entrancingly nice garden setting.  Anne James's ceramic dishes and forms were particularly interesting, with soft forms, dusty glazes and the odd flash of gilding.  I liked the simplicity of her work, mostly quite small pieces, understated but unusual.   It was good to have a conversation with her about her practice and new directions.   Details of their work is on the SITE Festival Artists' Trail brochure accessible here.

Finally, we made it to Nailsworth, where I wanted particularly to see the group show in the wonderfully named One Fat Quarter, a delightful old building now converted into studio space used by several textile artists.  Anne Weldon's work stood out for me - stunning white on black appliqué, minutely detailed images of winter trees, translated into stark black and white silhouettes.  One was a triptych on 3 panels with a n image of a stand of grand trees - which I thought much more evocative that the David Hockney Big trees paintings which I saw at the RA in February.   

These are my photos, taken at the show, and don't really do justice to the delicacy of her work.  

I thought her work was truly original, very simple but hugely effective in terms of both direct representation of an image, and evoking feelings of time and place and weather alongside the image itself.  Anne Weldon had also done some tiny b/w machine stitched pictures, and I bought one as a memento of the day, and of her work in particular.

And then home.  All in all, a delightful day, full of surprises, and I came back with my head swimming with images of the work I'd seen.  very inspiring, especially some of the textile work, and a reminder to me that stitch is still an important part of my creative vocabulary, and one I will try to return to over the summer.