Module 2 chapter 15

Designers of interest

The two designers I’ve decided to focus on for this chapter are very different but both have an exciting and quirky approach to textiles.

Firstly Gillian Bates, works in fast continuous line sketches of her home town, Eastbourne environment, which she then transfers to fabric and stitches out using free machine embroidery. Her minimal use of colour is added using 1930’s plain vintage fabrics, as she feels they give just the right atmosphere to the pieces. Her clever restraint in the addition of colour make her work very compelling as it jumps out against large areas of white.

As one of the choices of study was artists who use figures/faces as an inspiration I felt that she fits the criteria well.

Bate’s work was profiled in a very good article in Embroidery magazine July/August 2011.

You can see her work here

My second choice, Janet Crosby, is an artist whose work I was drawn to at a gallery in Rye, West Sussex, during the art festival last year.

For this exhibition, ‘Telling Tales’, Crosby had produced some amazingly quirky figures, all with a wonderful story behind them, which she describes perfectly on her short video here
http://www.myspace.com/janetcrosby (on the RHS of the page under profile Janet)

I was very impressed with the detail that Crosby puts into her figures and she has definitely inspired my decision to make a figure of Mary Tudor, concentrating on the more grotesque side of her personality.

Crosby’s drawings and paintings appeal to me as well , they are so human and often funny with the titles she gives them. It’s certainly a style that I would aspire to as humour and particularly narrative have featured in my previous work.

Although our instructions for this chapter were to look at 2 designers that inspired us I would like to include a third who also set me on the journey for my assessment piece.

Vin Burnham is a costume designer, with programs/films of awesome imaginative stories to their name, such as, The Dark Crystal, Lost in Space, The Fifth Element, Wind in the Willows, to her credit. Her show reel which you can see here is amazing.

What attracted me to Burnham was again an article in Embroidery magazine July/August 2010, which featured her collection of miniature costumes. They are exquisite quarter scale ballet costumes from the period when she worked in the Royal Opera House in the Nureyev and Fonteyn era.