Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Linda Green





I first saw Linda Greens work at the brilliant Follow a Thread exhibition at Ruthin Craft Centre. It was one of the best exhibitions I'd ever seen celebrating textiles, which saw me visit and revisit the show time and time again. One of the bodies of work that kept drawing me back was the exquisite 'Exploring Structure' series by Linda, a tapestry graduate of the Royal College of Art and Edinburgh College of Art.

A series of 21 miniature woven studies were created on pieces of found wood, shells and other ephemera upon which the textile remained. It's a delightful depiction of the fact that to weave, you just need 'something' to hold your warp threads taught, for you to then interlace the weft over and under. I love the fact that the 'loom' is not only a functional tool, but an imperative part of the resultant textile artwork. The series was displayed in a linear landscape arrangement, propped up on a shelf against a wall, and the pieces seemed to just dance from one to another. The tiny scale commanded you to look closely and appreciate the minutiae of the fibre and yarn surface in a way that you'd otherwise overlook.


The exhibition toured to Dovecot after it left Ruthin Craft Craft Centre, and you can see some more images of Linda's work in situ, as well as some of the other exhibits on the Innovative Craft Flickr photostream

Monday, October 29, 2012

Jane Harper




Jane Harper is the 2012 recipient of the Peter Collingwood Charitable Trust Award for innovation in weaving. The award aims to recognize excellence for a loom-based textile and I know that this years winner would certainly have piqued Peters curiosity. Jane has created some highly complex multi-layered constructions which have become truly 3-dimensional once off loom. The layers are separated and held proud from the ground cloth with insertions of acrylic sheet.


Jane is recent Textile Design graduate from Central Saint Martins, and this work is from her final degree collection which she entitled Collapsable Constructions. She has now moved back to her home city of Manchester where she aims to use her award towards setting up her own studio. She hopes to develop her structural textiles into functional works that could be used in an interior context. 


Do check out her new website for more images of her degree work.