What's On > Autumn/Winter 2008/9 Season >

VERVEY

TEXTILE & MIXED MEDIA ARTISTS

The Vervey group of seven textile and mixed media artists was formed in 2006.  Their aim is to provide encouragement for each other to develop their work and so push forward the boundaries of textile and mixed media art whether real or imaginary. Each member of the group has their own unique style which contributes to the diversity and interest of their exhibitions.

‘Reworked, Recycled, Revealed’

Linda J Calverley

The inspiration for this collection of work came from Linda’s doodle/sketch book. Some of the drawings are copied from photographs such as people, animals, and places and others are drawings of items found about the house. Most of the drawings are from her imagination and the ones she decided to ‘rework’ on were the pictures of houses. The first ‘house’ picture in the sketch book, of which there are many, came about when Linda was thinking of a project she did at college [BA(Hons)Textile & Surface Design] which included the tall buildings of New York and were drawn in a naive style.  

The ‘recycled’ items used include newspapers, old music, faulty/test inkjet prints, vintage prints, magazines, books, scraps of wallpaper, till receipts, painted paper scraps from previous projects, old art work [mainly for backgrounds] paper bags, letters, envelopes, old calendars, scraps of fabric, cut offs from curtains, furnishing fabric samples and vintage fabrics.

All the pictures are enhanced with stitching whether they are made from fabric or paper. The finished work is ‘revealed’. 

Website www.linsart.co.uk

Helen Dickson

Helen has always loved the costume and pageantry of dance and opera, however, having left it a little late to start ballet! She decided to express her interest through her artwork.  She has found inspiration in all aspects of performance from Swan Lake to pantomime and has combined printing, drawing, paper cutting and stitch to create her pieces.  

The concept for the project was to recycle and rework, Helen decided to re-use all the old pieces of work she had stored in her home which, having spent years never throwing anything away, was quite a few! Some pieces lent themselves immediately to the theme:- a previous project had been 'Baroque' so the colours and drama were naturally theatrical.  She did find however that even a tiny fragment of a long lost sketch could spark off a whole new artwork, revealing a hidden depth in something that had long since been forgotten.

Claire A Baker

Claire A Baker is a textile designer and lecturer living in Stockton-on-Tees. Her work for this exhibition was inspired by the beauty of the found objects themselves that she incorporates, and a poem, 'Make Me A Dress', written by her Myspace friend Séan.  

Claire makes use of vintage fabrics and ephemera, reworking scraps and creating new and exciting compositions in collage and embroidery. She is intrigued by the idea of revelation and feels her work enigmatically gives a glimpse into past era's and the forgotten lives of others through the mixed media discipline especially hand embroidery.

Gillian Tallentire

Moving On.

Gillian normally works within the medium of textile art, but with this project “Reworked, Recycled, Revealed” she wishes to stretch herself, by bringing in other medium to mix with stitch and create another dimension of art within her remit.  

Having always been a hoarder, Gillian often uses old fabrics and objects within her textile work.  Here, she has continued to look at recycling, by using paper, be it old photographs, envelopes and letters, but uses them in such a way that it reveals some of her thoughts and memories.  The handing down of old stories, by word of mouth, the memories revealed by old postcards and photographs are elements of recycling.  By reworking some of today’s recyclable waste Gillian has created these art pieces for inclusion in this exhibition.        

Helen Winthorpe Kendrick

Helen Winthorpe-Kendrick is a free lance textile artist and teacher living near Darlington.  She enjoys the challenge of incorporating a ‘story’ into her pieces. She uses the expressiveness of threads and the variety of fabric to convey a theme or idea.  These stories are sometimes obvious but mostly hidden and intertwined.  

In this exhibition Helen has incorporated the use of more unusual materials.  Computers are used in all walks of modern day life, indeed they have become an essential part of how we communicate, how we work and how our lives are organised – if not by ourselves then by some outside ‘body’.  In the accompanying pieces, discarded computer parts are used to convey the uses to which they may once have been put.  Computers are used as an aid in designing architecture – here the circuit boards are used to represent high rise office blocks.  Computers are used to send information about stocks and share prices very quickly to other parts of the world - here computer parts are used to represent the rise and fall of share prices and the credit crunch which has affected so many people.

Fire is a violent recycler of material, changing anything in its path to carbon dioxide, water vapour, pollutant gases and ash.  ‘Wild Fire’ represents an out of control fire of woodland.  ‘Conflagration’ depicts the devastation of a building as its various contents succumb to flame.

Margaret Sweet

Margaret lives in Darlington and she is proud to be born in the North East. She doesn’t have to travel far to appreciate the beautiful surroundings she lives in, even industry has been a great inspiration for her work. A keen needlewomen from a very young age she now has the time to follow her passion.

Her work includes the making of several Masonic Banners, Embroidery Commissions for private collections. Margaret is also a trained Milliner and her hats have graced such occasions as Royal Ascot and Society Weddings.

Oxidization of Copper was the starting point of her exhibition work; texture and colour were her main interest revealing the uneven surfaces and colour changes, Margaret’s work progressed still using the copper theme to recycling packaging by melting, shrinking, reworking and revealing new shapes. Various mediums were added to change the surface textures, oil pastels and acrylic paints were used to colour surfaces, and straight stitches, knots, beads and wire were then added.

Marian Graham

Title: ONE, TWO, BUCKLE MY SHOE.

This body of work has evolved from a previously completed project based on a grandmother's memory box in which there was a child's first pair of shoes. Using the shoes as a concept Marian has revisited the memories of her childhood which in the fifties was carefree and innocent with none of the pressures that children are subjected to today in the fashion or academic arena to compete with their peers at an early age.  

So by revisiting her memories of childhood and viewing it through the eyes of today, Marian's work at first sight looks innocent and carefree but on closer inspection the subtle but persistent pressures placed on the children of today reveal a less carefree childhood than we perhaps like to think.

Maintained by Jerry Cooper
Designed by Richard Lee
People's Theatre Arts Group © 2005