So pleased to be featured in another great article from Textileartist.org alongside a group of very talented artists. The article includes tips from Emily Jo Gibbs, Sabine Kaner, Nigel Cheney, Cas Holmes and myself.
A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour version 1 30 x 30 cms & version 2 • 33 x 28 cms
Version 1 was shown at the Uk Knitting & Stitching shows in the 62 Group of Textile Artists Essence exhibition celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Group.
These are very poignant pieces which capture the essence of my creative practice: textural stitch, appliqué and paint combine to create the allusion of a journey to another place and time. It is a poignant work depicting the visit of grandmother to a grandson she never met. He was born 3 weeks after she died. The Grimsby girl, my Mum, Muriel is shown as a child in this piece. She never had the opportunity to travel outside the UK in her lifetime; here she travels to Copenhagen where her grandson, Sam currently lives with his wife, Eliana.
A Step into the Unknown 2022 – revamped version • mixed media • 74 x 52 cms
Lost in a Strange World 2022 • mixed media – 74 x 52 cms
A selection of samples made for my Cast of Characters workshop for Textileartist.org
A selection of samples made for my Off the Grid workshop for Textileartist.org
Do you have a story to tell in stitch?
Fancy joining me in April 2023 at Hudson River Valley Workshops, in New York State, USA?
Dates: Sunday 16 April to Saturday 22 April 2023
This experimental workshop will focus on combining several images to create a real or imagined journey. The aim of the workshop is to encourage exploration and experimentation to capture the spirit of the journey and the people, real or imagined, who will accompany you on that journey.
Here’s the concept behind the ‘Journey Through Time’ workshop
Your journey could take the form of a Travelogue as in my USA Travelogue work Brooklyn: ‘Recollection, Return & Repartee’ (above) or it could take the form of a journey through life by incorporating more than one image of a specific person as in ‘My Portrait of a Grimsby Girl.’ (below)
You could push your imagination and take a real person on an imagined journey. In ‘A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour’ series I take my Mum to places she was never able to visit but that I think she would have loved.
Or ask ‘What if?’ And make a portrait of yourself or of your chosen person in another time or place .
Enjoy historical details by asking ‘What if I visited the Tudor period?’ or a different culture by asking ‘What if I could go to Japan? ‘A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour – Tokyo’. Or simply ask what if I take some 1930s Grimsby Girls to modern day London as in ‘RIP Grimsby St E2’ as in RIP Grimsby St E2 which is set in the east End of London.
This is primarily a hand/machine stitch workshop but you will have the option to focus entirely on hand stitch, or machine stitch, choose to combine both techniques or add appliqué and mixed media.
The techniques used in this workshop are suitable for all abilities.
You are asked to bring a selection of drawings or photographs, text or anecdotes you wish to include or use as personal inspiration for your work. A full guide to choosing suitable images to work from will be sent out in advance of the workshop.
Enrolment is now open for my 5 day narrative workshop.
I look forward to meeting you in the USA!
https://www.artworkshops.com/workshop/4210/
Shift : A change in direction.
Allusion: A suggestion or hint that calls something to mind without mentioning it.
Sue Stone Solo Exhibition ‘ Shifts & Allusions’ 2023
Venue: The Hub, Navigation Wharf, Carre Street, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 7TW
formerly the National Centre for Craft and Design
Exhibition runs from14 January to 12th March 2023 in the ground floor gallery.
I have been busy sorting out the work to show in my Shifts & Allusions exhibition and in this exhibition I will be inviting you to find the stories behind my compositions and work out for yourself what they mean.
Most of my work contains a nod to my Grimsby heritage. The fish has become my signature and it often appears somewhere in my work. This exhibition includes a selection of larger narrative works made between 2013 and 2022, some of which haven’t been shown before. They are shown alongside some new smaller studies and a selection of tactile handling samples which show some of the techniques I have used in the finished pieces.
I will be giving a gallery talk at 2pm on Sat 18 February 2023 and a teaching a one day workshop at the Hub on Sunday 19 February
‘A Focus on Faces • an introduction to illustrative portraits
This is a very personal piece which captures the essence of my creative practice: textural stitch, appliqué and paint combine to create the allusion of a journey to another place and time. It is a poignant work depicting the visit of grandmother to a grandson she never met. He was born 3 weeks after she died. The Grimsby girl, my Mum, Muriel is shown as a child in this piece. She never had the opportunity to travel outside the UK in her lifetime; here she travels to Copenhagen where her grandson, Sam, now a grown man, currently lives with his wife, Eliana.
This work is part of my Grimsby Girl’s World tour series. She has previously visited Bogota, Colombia, Outer Space, Tokyo, Japan, Madrid, Spain, Brooklyn, NYC, USA, & Vancouver, Canada. All places either myself or my work has visited.
Size: 30 x 30 cms
Materials: Linen fabric, cotton & linen threads, applied silk fabric, acrylic paint
Techniques: Hand & machine stitch, painting, appliqué
Retrospective • An Archive of work made in 2021
Imagined Journeys A series of small mixed media studies
Below: A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour continues • Stopover Brooklyn. Image credit Pitcher Design. Hand and machine stitch study
Below: Another Time, Another Place and In Another Life were selected for The Broderers Exhibition The Art of Embroidery 2022
In Another Life 2021 continues a Grimsby Girl’s world tour with a stopover in Madrid . Size 48.5 x 59 cms • Hand/machine stitch with applied fabrics
Born in 1913 she was not able to travel during her lifetime and had very few opportunities in life to pursue her artistic and musical interests. She left school aged 13 and was apprenticed to a tailor. It was a hard life with no recognition of her skill as a seamstress. She loved singing and was a talented contralto. Here in another life, alongside her best friend she travels to Madrid to study music, dance and theatre.
Another Time, Another Place 2021 • Size: 48.5 x 59 cms
Hand/machine stitch/applied fabrics.
Born in a time when women had no right to vote and many left school at 13 or 14 years old. Ordinary women without opportunities to work after marriage or to travel abroad. Combining images of unknown people from the family album with images from the Alcázar Real in Seville, Spain; symbols of heritage combine with memories to make the composition and bring together an imagined journey to another time and place.
Below: Made in Grimsby was selected for the 62 Group exhibition Connected Cloth
Made in Grimsby • The documenting of a small lifestyle clothing brand called Anywear. 1975 • in an Edwardian shop premises, womenswear was designed & made in Grimsby from cloth that travelled from far and wide. During the lifespan of the business the need to become more commercial had replaced the ‘one off’ designs. By 2002 the designer had had enough of designing other people’s clothes and Anywear closed its doors.
Materials :linen and recycled clothing fabrics, cotton and linen threads
Techniques: hand and machine stitch, appliqué, piecing, drawing
Size: 139 x 87.5 x 2.5 cms
Photos by Pitcher Design
Below: Portrait of Mrs P •a head and shoulders portrait of Constance Howard MBE 1910 – 2000.
Size: 30.5 x 38.5 cms (12 x 15ins)
Techniques: hand embroidery & appliqué. Materials: recycled cotton, linen & silk fabrics, cotton embroidery threads & wool yarn.
Portrait of Constance Howard MBE (1910 – 2000) who established the influential Embroidery department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She had a huge impact on contemporary embroidery in the second half of the 20th century.
Constance was a small, charismatic person with bright green hair which she sported from the 1930s up until her death. She was always known to her students as Mrs P.
Below: A Step into The Unknown
A Step Into the Unknown is part of the Imagined Journeys series • mixed media – Size: 116 x 84cms (46 x 33ins)
A series of small portraits
Made in Grimsby • The documenting of a small lifestyle clothing brand called Anywear. 1975 • in an Edwardian shop premises, womenswear was designed & made in Grimsby from cloth that travelled from far and wide. During the lifespan of the business the need to become more commercial had replaced the ‘one off’ designs. By 2002 the designer had had enough of designing other people’s clothes and Anywear closed its doors.
Materials :linen and recycled clothing fabrics, cotton and linen threads
Techniques: hand and machine stitch, appliqué, piecing, drawing
Size: 139 x 87.5 x 2.5 cms
Photos by Pitcher Design
I’m really excited to be teaching again for TextileArtist.org Stitch Club next week. It’s a textile story telling workshop and this week they have published a new article about my New York travel story pieces. Check it out here.
Girls in a Doorway
a new iPad drawing for work to be made in 2021.
Which Way Now? (below) aka A Self Portrait in Turmoil is perhaps an indication of my frame of mind during lockdown.
size:132 x 59 cms
mixed media
The Girls who made the Suits version 2 (below) is an experiment in texture and pattern
3 new self portraits (below) for the ongoing self portraits now numbering 67. 2 are replacements for portraits that have gone to new homes numbers 26 and 27 and a new one number 67.
A Book Before Bedtime (below) was a commission for the Grimsby Fishing heritage Centre – GFHC in a Box project supported by Arts council England
Made in 2020
Size: 54.5 x 40 cms
Materials: Acrylic gouache, pencil crayon, cotton and wool threads on cotton calico
Techniques: Hand embroidery, painting
A domestic scene from the 1950s when every night my Mum would read me a book at bedtime. We would sit on the settee with me ready for bed in my pyjamas. Our 1950s living room had heavy, dark utility furniture, a patterned carpet, patterned cushions, antimacassars on the settee, and faded patterned wallpaper with plaster ducks flying across the wall. Always a handbag, letters to post, and a favourite photo of my older sister on the side board and always a pair of shoes underneath the sideboard. The wireless set (radio) has a particular significance in capturing the atmosphere of the times. It was via the wireless that we would hear the news, both good and bad, of triumph and of loss. On the wall a picture of my Dad, Fred Stone working on the old pontoon on Grimsby docks in the 1950s with his brother, my Uncle Harry.
I am very proud of my Grimsby heritage and the close ties my family had with the Grimsby fishing industry in the 1950s is often reflected in the artwork I make. I was born in 1952 and as a child I spent a lot of time ‘down dock’ with my Dad, a Grimsby fish merchant. ‘Down Dock’ was a community within a community.
The passing on of knowledge has always been an important part of my artistic practice so when the chance to be involved with this project arose I was honoured to be able to take the opportunity to revisit my roots and make a piece of work for the Fishing Heritage Centre Collection and I welcome the chance for my work to reach a new audience through the loans boxes.
This Life Matters (below)
Work size w 190 cms x 35 cms
Portrait sizes 2 x 17 x 21 cms, 2 x 18.5 x 23.5 cms, 3 x 21 x 26 cms
Recycled linen clothing fabrics, cotton cambric, acrylic film, stranded cotton threads, cotton machine threads, industrial felt mat
Hand stitch, machine stitch, appliqué
‘This Life Matters’ is a series of 7 small portraits which focus on the inequality spotlighted by the Covid 19 pandemic. Each representative of the global community wears the same white t shirt with a slogan ‘This Life Matters’, a nod to Katherine Hamnett’s ‘Choose Life’ slogan t-shirts of the 1980s, Each has their own word embroidered at their side which indicates their circumstances or mindset: Displaced, disenfranchised, disconsolate, dispossessed, dispirited, disabled, and lastly disappearing. Each life is as important as the next.
A series of new teaching samples (Below) made in 2020
Narrative, Strip Weaving & Portrait – hand stitch & mixed media
Portrait of Anne Morrell (below)
hand stitch 26 x 30 cms
A commissioned work to accompany the article Roots in Two continents by Brinda Gill for Issue 95 (July /August) of Selvedge magazine
Brooklyn: Recollection, Return and Repartee (below)
Completed January 2020
Materials: linen & cotton fabrics, cotton & linen threads, acrylic paint
Size 100 x 77 x 2 cms
Techniques: hand stitch, machine stitch, appliqué, painting
Part of a series of work called From Grimsby* to Greenpoint & Beyond this piece Brooklyn: Recollection, Return, and Repartee recounts the artist’s memories of return visit to Brooklyn in March 2019. The viewer is taken on a journey during which flashbacks and glimpses of everyday life, are encapsulated in the ‘mind’s eye’ of the artist; attempting to capture of the essence of a specific New York borough and recalling the brogue of Brooklyn in the form of sights, experiences and written word.
Meandering lines plot our paths and the conversations twist and turn; from small talk on the subway to bantering with tall statues in Banker St, taking in gibberish and graffiti in Greenpoint, a powwow at Prospect Park, books at the Brooklyn public library and the buzz of Brooklyn Museum on the way.
The references in this piece include a homage to the street artist ESPO aka Stephen Powers & artist Deborah Kass
*Grimsby is the artist’s hometown in the UK.
womanwithafish 