'A Body of Work' - first showing

A selection of my work involving the human form starting with a drawing and prints from 1971/72 on Foundation Course at Bolton Art College. These were a development from drawing the life model as she walked round the room - very challenging!

Recent work - a slightly padded panel free-drawn on the sewing machine from lots of pencil and pen drawings of 2 minute poses of the life model. This piece references my stage costume work because the fabric used is 'Nude Net' which is used as a panel in a costume to look as though you can see bare skin.

Made last week - an experiment in construction. Machine embroidered panels, reminiscent of bodice panels from costume making, are seamed together to create a random form.

7 artists: Sue Lancaster, Jennifer Shonk, Jo Owen, Ken Jones, Paul Forster, Sam Dexter and Dionne Swift, are showing their own personal responses to working with the human form. The exhibition continues 11 to 4 each day until Friday 30th March. Further developments with possibly additional artists will be shown at KIAC, Sheffield later in the year.



Students' Work for City & Guilds Embroidery

I have been doing some assessing this afternoon.........
Lots of lovely work has been designed and made by the students since September. The first section that I have been looking at is work based on research into COLOUR. All the students looked at colour theory and how artists and designers have used colour before following their own investigations and experiments using the theme of CONFECTIONARY. Many observations, extractions and abstractions later they all produced an A2 design sheet in mixed media. They all then produced major samples based on a variety of machine and hand embroidery techniques which they combined in order to manipulate their fabrics and extend their previous expectations of stitch. Some of the students coloured their own fabrics before stitching into them.
I put all the work on display in the studio as pieces were finished and it made a fantastic 'collage' of surfaces. These are photos that I took of that display but they look as though they could be designs in themselves. Well done everyone!