Tag: Arnolds attic YouTube

Posted on

Amy Pabst – Meet the Artist


Author and quilter Amy Pabst grew up in rural West Virginia, where there’s a strong heritage of quilting. Her exhibition ‘Micropiecing: Quarter Million’ presents a series of 27 miniature quilts that focuses on the traditional pineapple block on a very small scale.

Amy Pabst: https://www.instagram.com/amymakesquilt

Foundation pieced pineapple quilt by Amy Pabst - Meet the Artist
Foundation pieced pineapple quilt by Amy Pabst – Meet the Artist

All blocks are less than 2.5cm, and each piece is less than 3mm wide. Each quilt has thousands of pieces, and the series was considered complete when the total number of pieces reached 250,000. The design sources for Amy’s quilts include antique and contemporary quilts, as well as original designs. 

Variation on pineapple foundation patchwork
Variation on pineapple foundation patchwork

Amy Pabst

Amy is a West Virginia native, discovered quilting in 2011 after finding a book at her local library. Since then, she’s created countless quilts and become a prominent figure in the quilting community.  Amy is a teacher, speaker, and judge for the National Association of Certified Quilt Judges, and she actively participates in local and international guilds.  Her first book, Log Cabin: The 100,000 Pieces Project, was published in 2020 by Quiltmania.

Currently, Amy is a full-time fibers student at Marshall University, with minors in creative writing and women’s studies.

Christmas quilt by Amy Pabst
Christmas quilt by Amy Pabst

Filmed at the Festival of Quilts 2024.

For a more inspiration, please browse the ‘Meet the Artist’ collection on my YouTube Channel.

Further reading

If you’ve enjoyed watching this video, you might like the work of Lynne Edwards featured in a video from the Festival of Quilts 2023.

Posted on

L’Merchie Frazier – Meet the Artist

L’Merchie Frazier is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who explores themes of Black identity in the Americas and beyond. Black and indigenous people have a shared history of over 500 years in unwritten, unrecognised and unacknowledged narratives about the spaces they occupy, physically, mentally and spiritually.  

Join L’Merchie as she shares the stories behind her work.

L’Merchie Frazier: https://lmerchiefrazier.org/

Story Quilt by L'Merchie Frazier
Story Quilt by L’Merchie Frazier

“The journey to establishing selfhood and importance that is manifest in today’s “call to action” is a trek of reclaiming the right to self-possession and ownership with elevated voice, story and space. Importantly, the direct action to embrace the right to exist, claim one’s own self-worth, beauty and love is a marked effort that fuels the move from insignificance to significance, to matter.”

This exhibition celebrates the Decade of African Descended People declared by the United Nations, 2015 to 2025. The LookBook quilts, The Quilted Chronicles series, participates in the restorative aesthetic to promote dialogue via an explorative historical lens, to reclaim the lives and legacies of Black and Brown people, children and their communities across centuries of memory, places and activism. 

Close up of a Story
Close up of a Story

L’Merchie’s quilts select moments to confront the impact of slavery and systemic racism.  

The inspiration to create these quilts is supported by archived threads of petitions, speeches, organisations, lawsuits, writings, media, witnessed violence and protests. The experience is documented from the kidnapping of Africans and their arrivals in 16th century, to the American Revolution, through the Civil War and the 13th Amendment in 1865, through the end of American Reconstruction, in a continuum to the 21st Century. 

Story Quilt by L'Merchie
Story Quilt by L’Merchie

Filmed at the Festival of Quilts 2023.

For a more inspiration, please browse the ‘Meet the Artist’ collection on my YouTube Channel.

Posted on

Fremantle Biennale 2023

Fremantle Biennale 2024

In August of 2023 I received an email from an Australia based sound artist called Rebecca Riggs-Bennett asking for assistance on a project she was working on with her mum Rachel Riggs for the Fremantle Biennale 2023.

Both Rebecca and Rachel are Lancashire born and bred and moved to Western Australia in 2010. Rachel had completed her masters in fine art at UCLan, predominantly focusing on research into Horrockses textile industry and cotton mills. Their new project together planned to look at another part of Lancashire’s history – the Lancashire Cotton Famine and the deportation of Lancashire women to Walyalup (Fremantle), Australia in 1863.

They’d seen a video I’d created about Helmshore cotton mill in Lancashire and asked if I could assist them with some original recordings of the sounds of the machines. It was an honour to assist them and these sounds are now layered into an audio visual artwork they created for the Fremantle Biennale 2023 called ‘So Once You Were Here They Had You’ .

Fremantle Biennale 2024
Fremantle Biennale 2024

‘SO ONCE YOU WERE HERE THEY HAD YOU’

The beautifully produced project can be viewed here on YouTube.

Close to the submerged remnants of the Fremantle Long Jetty, an immersive re-telling of arrival and separation will unfold.

‘So once you were here they had you’ is an experiential audio-visual poem to the 50 young cotton-weaver women who arrived on the shores of Walyalup, journeying by ship from Lancashire over 110 days and nights in 1863. Created by electronic music composer Rebecca Riggs-Bennett and video artist Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson, this work takes place across Bathers Beach, re-tracing the steps of the women and the many others of the “Bride Ship” era.

So once you were here they had you is a reflective honouring of the time swept experiences of these women. Cross with us into an immersive, at times ghostly, real and imagined narrative of migration, loss and departure. – R. Riggs.

A promotional image for 'So Once You Were Here They Had You' // credit Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson
A promotional image for ‘So Once You Were Here They Had You’ // credit Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson

Original research, dramaturgy & collaboration: Rachel Riggs
Animator: Jarrad Russell
Dramaturgy & Co-Designer: Rachel Riggs
Narration: Angeliki Georga & Phoebe Georga
Featuring poetry of the Lancashire cotton famine (1861-1865) by University of Exeter and audio recordings by Catherine Hill and Helmshore Mill.

For further information on the project please visit Rebecca’s website.