sutton071

Psst; do you want to know a secret? First, you'll have to tell us yours! According to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , the average person keeps a whopping 13 secrets and five secrets that they have never told to another living soul! Everyone knows that keeping things in is bad for us, so how do you find a safe and therapeutic way to let it go? Well, you can sing about it, talk about it, write a letter and freeze it, write a poem and burn it, or shout your secret to the wind and let it carry your words off scattered in the breeze.  Or you can give it to us: stitch your secret and send it to us for safe keeping.  Trivial, funny or deadly serious, it matters not. Letting a secret go in a safe place allows you to forgive yourself and let the past go.  Sharing a secret is an act of self-love. We are the Profanity Embroidery Group of Whitstable, Kent and you are invited to stitch your secret (profanity free) and make it part of an American style crazy quilt....

Illustration: Marlene Cohen. Healing. Marlene Cohen is a British textile artist that has taken her own strong and contemporary attitude towards her chosen medium, and created a distinctive style of composition and layering that is entirely her own. Cohen uses both printmaking and fine art disciplines, along with the usual aspects of textile work such as layering and stitching, to produce work that although technically part of the quilt medium, has managed to stretch that medium farther than most. Although Cohen works in a wide range of colours, tones and textures, I have chosen instead to concentrate on a series of pieces that she has produced in a much lower and much more minimal colour scheme. Shoah is a series of pieces that, although seemingly stark and severe, are in fact full of the most astounding build up of imagery and text that is strong in graphic, illustrative and fine art techniques. Illustration: Marlene Cohen. Target Zero. These pieces, to my mind at least, seem to have...

Illustration: Erin Wilson. Short Story #4 , 2009. The textile artwork of Erin Wilson at first seems effortlessly simple. Small boxes are repeated in a composition that includes regular rows and columns. However, when you consider that each small frame has been individually and consciously designed as a unique composition, and that some of Wilson's finished pieces can incorporate a large number of individual small framed art pieces, then the task set by the artist becomes much more one of quiet construction, with each individual square being seen as a world in itself. All the fabrics are hand dyed by Wilson and so therefore, each compositional piece of artwork takes that hand dying into consideration, bringing a harmony and balance to the many individual works that go into making Wilson's textile pieces. Illustration: Erin Wilson. Short Story #5, 2009. In some respects, the artist has taken the idea of the mechanics of quilting and the production of pattern work into the realms...

 Illustration: Ellin Larimer. Winter. Ellin Larimer's work celebrates colour, texture, and ultimately that of the drawn line. Through textiles, Larimer is able to express an innate understanding of both the complexities and subtleties that are involved within the parameters of a fine art context. Through the five pieces shown here, part of her Counterpoint series, Larimer takes segments of her work and produces through a fascinating process of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, a composition that flows in harmony colourwise, but seems to stagger with juxtapositions, linewise. There is a strange mixture of both tranquillity and movement within the work. The colours and textures play their part in allaying any fears the eye might have as to harsh, sharp, or drastic breaks in the composition, while the drawn line still retains these elements it seems less so because the clever use of colour balance.  Illustration: Ellin Larimer. Tumult. There lies the strength in ...

Illustration: Pat Pauly. Water, Earth II , 2008. I have chosen three pieces to represent the textile artwork of Pat Pauly. They are all part of a series she has entitled Water, Earth and are a good indication as to the techniques that Pauly has imbued her work with. Pauly's use of a bold, but confident colour palette is strikingly made apparent in these pieces. It is not a particularly easy path to take and is often fraught with problems, as colours have to be guided so that a careful balance is achieved. This is made all the more complex by Pauly's extraordinarily broken and fragmented compositions. These compositions seem at times to be combinations of mini-compositional structures. Water, Earth II for example, has five distinctive areas that could be classed as unique compositions that have been cleverly connected to each other in one piece, clearly opposing yet harmonising at the same time. However, Water, Earth IV is even more skilful, as the top part of the compositio...

Illustration: Helene Davis. Black Rain. Probably the most fundamental and guiding principal that colours, literally, the work of textile artist Helene Davis is that of her passion for hand-dyed fabric. Davis, after using bought quilting fabrics for a number of years, moved into the process of hand-dying her own fabrics, making each quilting project a much more personal and individual process. Illustration: Helene Davis. Black Rain (detail). Hand-dying is an exciting but often less than accurate medium in which to work. It takes a lot of skill, time, and patience in order to arrive at a range of fabrics in colour-ways, tones, and scale that can easily be worked with. The fact that the images shown in this article have arrived at that point, is easily evident. Davis is in control of the medium from start to finish. By producing her own dyed fabrics, she is able to forge a link between colour and texture that is both personal and individual, something that can never be truly said for bou...

Illustration: Marion Coleman. Untitled , 2007. These four abstract textile art pieces by Marion Coleman, are all linked through a series of commonalities, colour, texture, and pattern. However, probably the most obvious and noticeable link is that of her use of patterned textiles. In these particular pieces, she uses a mixture of locally American sourced textiles and perhaps more importantly, a generous supply of African sourced textiles. It is the use of the decorative and mark-making capabilities of these specific African cotton fabrics that allow the abstract compositions to be so successful. The power of decoration within an abstract setting could be classed as counter to the ideas of abstraction itself, but in reality, these repeated decorative patterns become all the more powerful because of their relationship with, and their dependence on each other. The sense of balance between the differing qualities of the fabrics, whether that be through size, texture, colour, or tone, are a...

Illustration: Denise Linet. Random Ascent, 2009. The work of textile artist Denise Linet resembles that of a complex assemblage of different mediums, experiences, and observations. Linet's work incorporates a whole host of printing processes from straightforward dying and painting to the much more complex and accomplished process of the transference of photographic imagery. These processes give the artist a wide range of surface textures and mark making capabilities in which to build up her compositions. Illustration: Denise Linet. Pond's Edge , 2009. It is the very nature of the relationship between the layers and processes, which are such an integral part of her work that seem to so intrigue Linet. These are not random juxtapositions, but are that of a complex visualization of a particular point in space. The artist has taken a moment in time, sometimes at a particular setting or personal experience, which is then interpreted in a number of textile mediums. These separate a...

Illustration: Pat Dolan. Earth Cells. The organically inspired textile artwork of Pat Dolan can be viewed as both a reflection of the macro or micro cosmos that we live both with and inside. Dolan in fact shows us a world that we cannot see with our own eyes and very often find hard to perceive. It is a world of building blocks, an organically derived series of balances and relationships between near likenesses and complete opposites. This tension between opposite and similitude would seem to be a recipe for constant tension within the natural world, but this complex series of relationships creates an organism that gains strength through the variety of opposites, negatives and similarity groupings. Illustration: Pat Dolan. Earth Cells (detail). This complex relationship is cleverly highlighted by Dolan in her work. She often uses very close juxtapositions; in fact a series of strained partnerships would be a closer analogy, between the light and the dark, the soft and the hard and the ...

Illustration: Deborah Lacativa. Clubbin , 2007. Illustration: Deborah Lacativa. Clubbin (close up), 2007. I was actually looking for work by another artist altogether today, when I came across the intriguing work of Deborah Lacativa. I have become an instant fan and therefore decided to write a post dedicated to her instead of the original artist that I had been looking for. Lacativa is an American artist from Georgia (the state not the country). She deals very much in the genre of textile art, using dye discharge techniques, along with free form stitching, to produce pieces of art work that are really not meant for anything but display purposes. This is not a criticism, as I personally believe that textile art deserves a place in the fine art pantheon. Unfortunately, it is very often either dismissed altogether by those with a vested interest in the narrow confines of the fine art definition, or placed within the large undefined world of craft. Illustration: Deborah Lacativa. Koda...