TextileArts news and re:views

A new website connecting tutors, organisations and students in UK for arts and crafts subjects

If you've noticed recently how much harder it's become to find adult leisure and recreational courses in the UK since the government's decision to focus resources on younger people, you'll welcome this site that aims to fill the information gap.

To find out more, visit www.leisurelearners.com. The site launched in October and aims to become a treasure trove of information on tutors and on classes or potential classes. Learners register to find suitable courses and workshops, how tutors can be contacted, what their backgrounds are and many other details, such as location and fees. It's a free service to learners, who can check in as often as they like to see the latest information, and registered members receive a regular email newsletter with site developments and other useful information.

If you are an individual tutor or course provider of Arts and Crafts /Humanities recreational courses or workshops, including residential courses, Leisure Learners offers a cost effective way to advertise - less than the cost of a newspaper advert. The service has the potential to grow into a great resource, and it needs you and your course(s) - there's a special promotional offer running through December, offering a discount on tutor registration, so now is good time to join.

The information is being gathered and constantly updated by two friends:
Ingrid Ellis, who has been running her local Embroiderers Guild' group over a number of years, has encountered a large number of tutors and is also a tutor herself; and
Zoe Ainsworth-Grigg, who is also a Member of the Embroiderers' Guild and has taught silk painting.

For further information please contact Ingrid or Zoe via www.leisurelearners.com

"Art, Nature, Creativity, Life" is a new online book by Virginia A. Spiegel, available now with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the American Cancer Society.

"Art, Nature, Creativity, Life" is full of essays; art, art, and more art; recommended books for artists, nature lovers, gardeners and other creative types; over 80 inspirational photos; more than 35 haikus, and much more. The nineteen chapters are greatly expanded versions of the best issues of Virginia Spiegel's e-newsletter of the same name.

You can find ordering information, reviews, and more information about the online book, and a sample chapter, on Virginia Spiegel's web site.

Cas Holmes

29 September - 25 November 2007 ~ Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case and Rochester Cathedral

Amber Walls

Cas Holmes' narrative works combine recycled materials with digital photographic techniques and methods adapted from Japanese textiles, textile art and papermaking. Her work is informed by personal experience, places visited, stories of her Romany grandmother and old forgotten textiles.

Exotic images, colours and landscape alien to the English experience surrounded Cas during her recent research trip to India, which was supported by Arts Council England. The new works in this exhibition examine cultural links between the Northern Indian art and decoration and her Romany heritage within a broader cultural context.

She has combined the found materials gathered in India with donated waste silks and fabric from the UK, and reassembled them into large wall hangings and more intimate textile canvases. Richly coloured stitched images reflecting patterns and forms from textiles, buildings, posters and street life form part of the main exhibition, and an installation in the Rochester Cathedral Crypt provides a small, enclosed space for contemplation and reflection.

Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case
Medway Visitor Information Centre, 1st Floor
95 High Street, Rochester, Kent.
Phone: 01634 843666

Open Mon - Sat 10am - 5pm, Sun 10.30am - 5pm
Admission free

www.medway.gov.uk/arts
www.casholmes.textilearts.net

Sharon Boggon's popular blog, In A Minute Ago, has moved to a new home here, and Sharon's other blogs Mindtracks and Wisdom of the Ages have also moved (these links are to the new addresses). Sharon tells the story of the move in her first post at the new address. If you haven't visited In A Minute Ago before, it's a mine of inspiration and information you really shouldn't miss. Just one example is the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge, which suggests ways to experiment with a different stitch each week throughout 2007; and there's much more - Sharon always manages to have her finger on the pulse of what's happening around the textile art community, and she updates her blog every day to share the latest news, a great site she's found, a snippet of information or a link to an interesting article. Sharon shares her thoughts and questions freely so there are some very interesting discussions in the comments, and on her new blog it's very easy to join in.

Sharon's Dictionary of Stitches for Hand Embroidery and Needlework is another excellent resource for embroiderers, and was one of the earliest textile resources on the web at a time when many people were hardly aware that the internet existed, let alone finding creative ways to use it.

March 23rd sees the publication of a new book - Mark Making - about the embroidery of Tilleke Schwarz. The book covers 20 years of Tilleke's work in full colour photography, with an introductory essay by Dr Jessica Hemmings, focusing on the content of the work.

Mark Making is published by Ter Burg (editor of the Dutch Textile magazine Textiel Plus). It's a 72 page softback, written in English, with some parts also translated into Dutch. Priced at 15 euros (postage and packing is extra), the book can be ordered from Tilleke Schwarz - contact her on or visit www.tillekeschwarz.com.

A major exhibition of Tilleke Schwarz's work will be shown in the UK in autumn 2007 at the Knitting and Stitching Shows in London, Birmingham, Dublin and Harrogate, and Mark Making will also be on sale, if you can bear to wait! More information at www.twistedthread.com, where the new book will also be available to order soon.

The forthcoming issue of Maggie Grey's online magazine, Workshop on the Web, is a very special issue - a moving tribute to Valerie Campbell-Harding, who died on 5 October.

Few people can have touched as many lives in the world of textiles and embroidery as Val: inspiring, teaching and sharing her great knowledge and delight in exploration. Her life, her work, her writing and her teaching are all remembered and celebrated throughout this issue by those who learned from her, worked with her, and loved her.

December's WoW also carries an article by Val herself, 'Seeing Pink Elephants', an invitation to play and discover new textures in the oddest of raw materials.

Workshop on the Web represents joyful excellence in textile art, an ethos that owes much to Val's influence and inspiration. It consistently demonstrates the wonderful creativity of those who practise embroidery and other textile arts, and it's going from strength to strength as a community. I always love to read it, and this issue is definitely one to treasure.

The December issue of Workshop on the Web is out on 1 December.

www.workshopontheweb.com