Chapter 12: Study Three Artists... who use elements of this module in their work

Hi Sian, below is a precis of my artist studies which are in my folder with photos of each artist's work. For the blog, I have linked to their websites instead.

1. Jae Maris 

Jae has a lovely informative website where she generously shares pictures of her work and the inspiration behind them. She trained as a painter, adding stitch to her work later in her career.

Her daily visual diaries are a springboard for the colourful, abstract, painted and stitch panels she creates. She is also an international teacher and member of the 62 group of textile artists.

She has just published a new book, Contrasting Elements, 

2. Barbara Lee Smith

I met Barbara at the Knitting and Stitch show at Ally Pally in 2006. She was my chosen artist for Module Four of this Certificate. I saw her DVD which explained her creative process and had a lovely conversation with her. She talked about letting our mistakes take us somewhere new in our work. That stayed with me and I have tried to apply it to my own work ever since. I applied this wisdom to fruitypops when I realised that my A1 piece of Romeo soluble film proved unworkable. (see my Evaluation... changes to the way I'd make it)

Barbara is fascinated by maps and landscape. She builds rich and peaceful surfaces with her deceptively simple technique. Her base material is Lutrador which she colours with light fast paints; more detail is added with print, then rich texture and detail with collage. Her delicate map-like tracings are made with machine stitch. Finally the edges are fused and each piece suspended from a baton slightly away from the wall so that the cast shadow is part of the finished piece.

Her latest work is inspired by the walls of village homes in Nicaragua which were rebuilt with available materials after mudslides destroyed them during hurricane Mitch.

3. Marian Bijlenga

Marian has definitely been a strong influence on my work for this module. I remember reading a profile about her in Embroidery magazine, and the memory of it lingered. 

Inspired by natural forms, she machine stitches horsehair into long cords and sews it between 2 layers of fabric to create round shapes. She then pins, traces, and sews the small elements to water-soluble fabric which is finally washed away. Each piece is hung a pin's length from the wall so that the cast shadows are integral to the piece.

Some of her pieces are huge and there is a wonderful picture of her on her website, halfway up a ladder, working out the placement of her individual shapes.