A New Home for Girl’s Day Out

A Girl’s Day Out in the East End for Hilda, Nellie and Ida 
mixed media • hand and machine stitch with acrylic paint
size 128 x 102 cms

Yesterday I delivered this piece to its new home in the North East of England. I was sad to see it go so I decided to revisit how I made it, however, I am very happy that it has gone to such a good home with new owners who love it so much. It was made in 2012 for one of the 50th Anniversary exhibitions by the 62 Group of Textile Artists ’62@50′ at the Holden Gallery at Manchester School of Art.

This is my Artist Statement for that exhibition.
Exploring displacement using old family photographs, images of distant relatives I never knew, cut into to a modern day environs, Girls Day Out enquires into and questions, the sense of belonging/not belonging whilst referencing the passing of time and the transience of life itself.

Image of Grimsby St E2

3 Sisters walk down the prom in Cleethorpes

Hilda, Nellie and Ida were 3 sisters and Ida, the tall, elegant one on the right was my sister’s mother-in-law. This piece combined the then, the now and alludes to a journey in-between. The street art in the background is by an artist called Stik and was found in Grimsby St London, E2 in 2011. The images above are the original images I combined to make the work and those below are of the work in progress.

work in progress

work in progress

work in progress

 

 

New ebooks from Textileartist.org

A great new series of ebooks from Textileartist.org

NB: My work is featured in Contemporary Stitch 1

See all Textileartist.org ebooks  on their ebook page

See Textiles Re:imagined e-book

See  Response to Landscape e-book

See  Inspired by nature e-book

See Contemporary Stitch 1 e-book (NB:This one features my work)

See Contemporary Stitch 2 e-book

63:63 – 2016

Portrait of a Grimsby Girl 2014

Retrospective • An Archive of Work 2015

A Gallery of Work made in 2015

Most of the year 2015 was taken by the making of 63 • a Self Portrait made up of 63 images but I did manage to fit in a couple of other pieces. I began the year by making a partner piece for Portrait of a Grimsby Girl 2014 which was called Portrait of a Lincolnshire Lad a triple portrait of my Dad. It measures 76 x 55 cms and is mixed media : hand and machine stitch with paint.

Portrait of a Lincolnshire Lad 2015

I also managed a commission of Great Grimsby Ice Factory.

Great Grimsby Ice Factory 2015

About 63
63 is a self-portrait made up of 63 images, one for each year of my life so far. So why put myself through all this work, and, to be perfectly honest, the angst of self examination, a replaying of all the ups and downs of life?

There were several reasons, but the main one was that I was asked to take part in a self-portrait exhibition in 2015 and I was given a 6 metre wall to fill!

For this I had to work to a deadline and that in turn forced me to look at the way I work and helped me find a simplification of my mark-making.

I didn’t finish it in time as my thought process was slower than expected and so it was shown as work in progress. Numbers 1 to 42 were shown.

Numbers 1 to 57 were completed in 2015 and are shown below.

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Self portrait age 3 2015 one of an ongoing series of self portraits

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Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries

I’m proud to say that Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries 2015 shown above is now part of the prestigious Diana Springall Collection . It measures 25.5 x 30.5 cms.

Exhibitions 2015

Society of Designer Craftsmen Christmas Market – 14 – 20 December – Mall Galleries, London
Illustrative and Stitched Drawings – 28 November – 10 January 2016 , Customs House Gallery, South Shields, Tyne & Wear, UK
New Textiles Transformed – 3 October – 7 November – Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge, USA
Shifting Images – 8 September 2015 – 7 February 2016 FHC, Grimsby, N E Lincs, UK
Face the World – 12 October – 25 October Sam Scorer Gallery, Lincoln
Festival of Quilts – 6 August – 9 August – NEC Birmingham with Through Our Hands
62 Group • NOW! -17 March – 10 May Upfront Gallery Cumbria
Designer Crafts at the Mall – 8 January to 15 January, Mall Galleries, London

Retrospective – an Archive of work from 2007/8

Past Forward 2008
This exhibition was the result of seven artists and a composer working with the art of the past.
Each one chose a particular artist and made studies from their work, in the form of drawings, sketches and paintings. The knowledge gained from this analysis was used to make more personal pieces. The artist I studied was Grant Wood.
Grant Wood (1891-1942)
Best  known for his famous canvas American Gothic (1930)  American artist Grant Wood was born and raised in Iowa in America’s rural heartland .
Grant Wood founded his art on his heritage and pioneered a new vision of Regionalist Art.After a trip to Europe in 1928 he started to experiment with some artistic elements adapted from the old Flemish masters using their decorative patterning and solid contoured painting in his subsequent work.
I first became interested in Grant Wood’s paintings a few years ago when I used a transcription of American Gothic  for a series of 5 self portraits so I decided to take a closer look at his lesser known work.
Woman with Plants is an unsentimental portrait of the artist’s mother depicting her as an archetypal pioneer woman with a rather lush farmscape in the background . This was Wood’s first serious attempt at a neo-Flemish painting In my version Woman with Fish  instead of Grant Wood’s mother I have depicted my maternal grandmother Annie Jane Smith and have replaced the Iowa landscape with a Lincolnshire landscape (Tetney Lock to be more specific) The plants have become fish and Wood’s signature windmill is now the Grimsby Dock Tower.

woman with fish 2007

Daughters of Revolution  Depicting them as shortsighted spinsters whom he called ‘ those Tory Gals ‘this satyrical painting was executed as a revenge on the local members of the DAR after they publicly criticised a piece of his work for being assembled abroad. In my version Daughters of Grim (above right) I have replaced the stern faced DAR women with my maternal grandmother Annie Jane Smith and my paternal grandmother Alice Ann Stone on the left of the picture and my mother Muriel May Stone  on the right. The painting in the background depicts the brave fishermen of the Grand Fleet Grimsby c 1920. and I have replaced the teacup with a small fish .

Daughters of Grim 2008

Art of the Stitch 2008/9
March 2008 – November 2009 – I had 2 pieces selected from 944 entries of which 56 were chosen to be shown . Biennial Exhibition presented by the Embroiderer’s Guild in association with Coat’s Crafts.
International Tour :Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery,UK, Deutsches Textilmuseum, Krefeld, Germany, Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, Hungary, Knitting & Stitching shows, London & Harrogate 2009
East End Chair 2007 (left) Woman with a Fish 2007 (right)

East End Chair

Woman with a Fish ’07

A selection of beach and landscapes 2007/8

Tetney Vista

Humberstone Fences

Humberstone

Humberstone Foreshore

Tetney Lock

Humberston Beach

Retrospective • an Archive of Work 2017

Retrospective • an Archive of work 2016

Retrospective • An Archive of work from 2015

Retrospective • An Archive of work from 2013/14

Retrospective • An Archive of work from 2011/12

Retrospective • An Archive of work from 2009/10

Retrospective • An Archive of work from 2007/8

Retrospective • An Archive of work from 2003 to 2006

 

63 – A Self-Portrait – Work in Progress

63 is a self-portrait which, when complete, will be made up of 63 images, one for each year of my life so far. So why put myself through all this work, and, to be perfectly honest, the angst of self examination, a replaying of all the ups and downs of life?
Well, there were several reasons, but the main one was that I was asked by Alf Ludlam, the curator of Shifting Images an exhibition of self-portraits at the Muriel Barker Gallery at Grimsby’s Fishing Heritage Centre, to produce something other than a straight forward self-portrait and this was the idea I came up with. I also thought it would benefit me personally because I would be working to a deadline which, in itself, would force me to look at the way I work and help me find a simplification of my mark-making.

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63 work in progress – 4

Although I work in mixed media I consider myself primarily an embroiderer, more specifically a hand embroiderer and because I find hand stitching a therapeutic process, I have a tendency to overstitch. I’m hoping that, in this piece, the viewer will find that my stitching have been given more breathing space and as a result more status. My stitch vocabulary is considered and limited. I don’t use many different types of stitches and but I try to get the most out of those stitches by using them in an original way. I was once given some advice by Constance Howard, when I was studying at Goldsmith’s College in London who said that “you don’t need to know a vast array of stitches but you need to know how use the ones you do know well” so that’s what I try to do.

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I don’t really look at the work of other embroiderers in an inquisitorial way. This is deliberate, an attempt to keep my own work fresh. One of the ways I do this is by mixing different colours and different weights of threads in the needle leaving the eye to mix the colour. You can read about my favourite stitches  here.
I have deliberately tried to be sparing with my stitching of the faces in this piece to produce a more illustrative style. Mood, quality, expression, character can all be changed by the position of each stitch and a lot of drawing and re-drawing, stitching, unpicking and restitching has been done before moving on.

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I am a ‘glass half full’ sort of person but the process of making this piece has, so far, and I am only just over half way there, been an convergence of mixed emotion. The process has, at times, evoked difficult and even desperately unhappy emotions, the reliving of all that teenage angst, hurt, heartbreak, and loss, the business problems and burglaries, but alongside that the uplifting and happy memories of friends and family and an optimism for the future.

Overall it is proving to be a quite cathartic process.

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63 will be shown as a ‘work in progress’ in Shifting Images from 8 September 2015 to 6 March 2016. – contemporary self portraiture
Working in partnership with Abbey Walk Gallery the Muriel Barker Gallery at the Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre will host an Exhibition of of self – portraiture by Lincolnshire Artists past and present.

A Taste of Seville – Part 2

The Tiles of the Alcazar Real

The Alcázar Real of Seville encapsulates the historical evolution of the city during the last millennium, amalgamating influences starting from the Arabic period, late Middle Ages Mudéjar right through to the Renaissance, Baroque and the XIX century.

The tiles at the Alcazar Real are incredible and they are everywhere floors, walls, ceilings,and also outside in the gardens!. Here is just a flavour of what we saw. Truly inspirational.

Read more about this incredible Palace here 

Tiles Alcazar Real, Seville

A Taste of Seville • Part 1

If I was looking for some inspiration on my recent  travels I certainly found it in Seville. It has everything I love and in the Spring the weather is perfect for me. It ‘s a friendly city with great food (it’s where Tapas originally came from) and is of a modest size compared to some Spanish cities but it has has culture in abundance. There’s still so much I didn’t see I’ll have to go there again.

  

First we visited the cathedral which breathtaking and I even managed to climb to the top of the tower to take in the magnificent views.

Details of the Cathedral, Seville, Spain

One of the views from the top of the tower. Just to prove I made it up there!

It has a beautiful palace, the Alcazar Real with its moorish architecture, decorative and sometimes quirky tiles  and wonderful gardens. The tiles have to be a post all of their own but here’s some images of the architecture, the gardens and the underground pool which was used during the summer months to keep cool.

Details of the Alcazar Real

Details of the Alcazar Real

Alcazar Real Gardens

Alcazar real gardens

Underground pool Alcazar Real

You’ll be pleased to know I did spot some graffiti amongst all this culture in Seville. I love the cat!

Cat Graffiti Seville, Spain

and here are some unusual window displays

and finally some dazzling flowers and it wouldn’t be Seville if I didn’t include and orange or two……….

Inspiration for Stitch – Part 4 – The Innocent Victims of War

The inspiration for my work can come from anywhere and everywhere and it sometimes takes on a more serious note. I turned on the radio and heard her voice and the words I will never forget “This is not my War”. They were the words spoken by a Syrian mother whose children aged 5,10 and 12 had just been killed by mortar fire in a war she did not understand. The sound of her voice will stay with me forever.

Some Things Never Change commemorates those children and the many others like them that have lost their lives, or have been mentally or physically scarred by war. The lives of those who have survived war and atrocity are changed for all time.
My Dad and his siblings Harry and Madge were children of the First World War, born just before and during so called ‘war to end war’. I have used their images to represent the universal child. The concrete pillar in the background is inspired by the concrete architecture of the skate park on the South Bank of the Thames and the graffiti of street artist Stik and is covered with cross stitches representing the kisses those Syrian children will never receive.

Some Things Never Change 2012

I listen to the Radio and hear his Voice again recalls something I heard on Radio 4. A 10 year old boy was talking to the reporter “You can’t imagine what I’ve seen, what my country has seen”. The Universal Child uses an image of my Dad to represent children affected by war worldwide.

The Universal Child

I Listen to the Radio and Hear his Voice.

The Unknown Statistic comes from my research into the First World War during the run up to the centenary in 2014 of the start of the war. A photograph is of some children, unknown to me, but in my husband’s family album was my starting point. I have had this image waiting to be used for many years but it was only when I saw the graffiti in the East End of London I knew how I was going to use it. The children have a poignancy to them. They look as though they are watching someone walking away. I decided to use their images as a way of commemorating all the children left fatherless by the First World War. The exact number of children is unknown as it was not recorded accurately either locally or nationally. I imagined their father was one of the brave Grimsby fishermen whose trawlers went minesweeping the coast with very little protection and little recognition. He walked away and never looked back. It was bad luck for a fisherman to turn around and look back as they walked away to sea. They never saw him again. My own Great Grandfather, Harry Conder died during the first few weeks of World War One when the trawler Fittonia, of which he was skipper, was blown up by a mine in the River Humber. He was survived by a widow and several children. His eldest son Charles Conder died during the last weeks of the war of Spanish Flu, the virus that would be responsible for more than five times as many deaths as the war itself.

Kids from the Family album

east end graffiti

The Unknown Statistic

Ebb & Flow • Behind the Scenes

Portrait of a Grimsby Girl

The opening of the 62 Group Ebb & Flow exhibition is getting closer but the project itself has been almost two years in the planning. 

It started with an invitation from Grimsby Minster to show our work in the Minster which is a busy and vibrant resource for the people of North East Lincolnshire, an “architectural gem” tracing its history on this site for more than 900 years. I soon realised, however, that because we are such a large group of very diverse artists that there would not be enough suitable hanging space and display for smaller 3D work in the Minster for all of our work to be shown.

A second venue was sort and we were offered the upper floor, the mezzanine, of the Muriel Barker Gallery at the Fishing Heritage Centre in Grimsby. The Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre was purpose built and opened in 1991. Its permanent exhibition tells the story of the Grimsby Fishing Industry in its heyday in the1950s. The white-walled space at the Fishing Heritage Centre contrasts nicely with the grandeur of the Minster.

Lucy Brown
All at Sea

The Ross Tiger, GY398, is an ex-working 1950’s trawler and the largest item in the heritage collections. Lucy Brown, one of our exhibiting members has made site specific work to be shown on board the Tiger. The image left shows Lucy’s ‘sea bags’ which will be installed around the living quarters on the Tiger. Once the venues were in place we worked on the detail of the project and funding bid to Arts Council England by Grimsby Minster which was successful. This enabled us to work with freelance writer and curator, June Hill who has been on hand to advise the group throughout the project and who will be opening the exhibition on 13th September. It also helped the group to put together a full education programme and to produce a full colour catalogue with professional photography which will be on sale at both venues.

Details of our education programme can be found here. Many of our members visited Grimsby in February when we were given a tour of both venues and of the museum collections store. All of our exhibitions are selected by a selection panel of 5. The panel is different for each exhibition and can include a representative from the venue. The selection process has now been completed and 37 pieces of work were selected for the exhibition made by 28 artists.

Photography Day at the Minster

This week we also completed the photography for the catalogue which is now in the design stages. The catalogue will be on sale at both venues.

The photographer for the majority of the pieces is David Ramkalawon who came to Grimsby from London for 2 days to photograph work at both venues.

The snap left shows David photographing work in Grimsby Minster. 

Next week the hanging process begins. Watch this space for more ‘behind the scenes’ glimpses of Ebb & Flow.

Penny Burnfield’s Japan – introduction

Penny Burnfield is a fellow member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists and has a keen interest in gardens and gardening . Here she tells of her recent trip to Japan to help hang the 62 Group exhibition.

pennyburnfield

I’ve wanted to go to Japan for most of my life. One of the first gardening books I bought was “The Gardens of Japan” by Sima Eliofsen. I remember reading it from cover to cover. I longed to go and see these wonders for myself. So when an opportunity arose at the end of 2013, I took a deep breath and said “I’ll go”.

I belong to the 62 Group of Textile Artists and by dint of persistence and good fortune we were able to send an exhibition out to Tokyo. So the primary reason for the trip was to help our Japanese member, Atsuko Yamamoto, to “hang” the show.

Those people who visit art shows but have never been involved with their organisation, can have no idea how much it involves: unpacking – arranging a disparate selection of work into a harmonious whole – lugging moveable boards and display…

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