Tag: Catherine Hill Textile Artist

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Salts Mill in Bradford

Salts Mill in Bradford

This was my first ever visit to Salts Mill in Bradford. It’s a stunning former working Mill full of the most wonderful industrial architecture and a stunning setting to host the Saltaire Arts Trail 2022.

Salts Mill in Bradford
Salts Mill in Bradford

Down Victoria Road nestled withing the Mill at Location 10 on the trail is The Stitch Society Shop – a perfect setting for me to share my work.

The Stitch Society Shop at Salts Mill
The Stitch Society Shop at Salts Mill

Caroline at The Stitch Society kindly gave me access to her vintage cloth and garment off cuts so I could start hand stitching a site specific piece as a memento of the weekend – I’ll share more in another post.

My artwork exhibited together for the first time.
My artwork exhibited together for the first time.

The weekend will always be very special to me. It’s the first time I’ve had a collection of my work on exhibition together – Summer ’76, The Sound of the Kenwood Chef, Covid-19 Part 1, Worker Bees, Sound of the Mill, Time for Tea, Take Time to Small the Roses, Matchbox Challenge and Moors of Home – and the first time I’ve really had a chance to experience the visitors’ reactions to my work.

I’ve had requests for an expanded selection of cards, artwork prints, talks and workshops so I’m putting my thinking cap on.

printed cards
A new addition – Selling cards for the first time
All tidied up
That’s a wrap – all packed up

The weekend was a huge success. I met some amazingly talented artists and more importantly I made some new friends.

Saltaire Arts Trial 2022 poster featuring the event poster and mill architecture
Saltaire Arts Trial 2022
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Sound of the Mill

Hand Embroidered Sound of the Mill

Sound of the Mill #1 & #2 – created as companion pieces for ‘Worker Bees’ – feature Lancashire Dialect poetry from The Cotton Mill poem, first published in The Bolton Chronicle in 1864.

Sound of the Mill #1
Sound of the Mill #1

The growth of cotton manufacturing during the industrial revolution changed the landscape of Northern towns forever. Workers lived in rows of terraced homes within earshot of the Mill they worked in, each long day of work starting with the call of the factory bell. By 1860 there were 2650 cotton mills in Lancashire, employing more than 440 000 people and producing half of the World’s cotton.

This extraordinary poem, by an anonymous machine operator, with its onomatopoeic effects and rhythms echoed from heavy industry captures concisely the atmosphere of the working mill. It moves from the sounds of the machines to the behaviour of the human operators.

Sound of the Mill #2
Sound of the Mill #2

Size: each panel 13 x 9 cm. Hand embroidered and hand stitched using vintage Sylko threads onto cotton cloth which has been eco rust printed.

These pieces were created as a nod to James and Jane Nixon, my ancestors who worked as weavers in the Mills in Blackburn at the time this poem was written.

Sound of the Mill and Worker Bees
Sound of the Mill #1 & #2 and Worker Bees

I was delighted to share them in an exhibition of my hand embroidered work at the Saltaire Arts Trail 2022, Salts Mill, Bradford.

recent exhibition of work at Saltaire Arts Trail 2022, Salts Mill, Bradford
A recent exhibition of work at Saltaire Arts Trail 2022, Salts Mill, Bradford

These pieces form part of a body of work on Lancashire dialect poetry from the Lancashire Cotton Famine 1861-1865.

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Giant Cauliflower Harvest

Giant Cauliflower Harvest, is my latest piece of needlework created as a companion piece for the upcoming Fifty Bees 5 exhibition curated by Textile Artist Lydia Needle.

The exhibition concept is that Lydia hand stitches 50 British bees and each invited artist creates a companion piece for just one of the bees.

My little bee is the Long-Fringed Mini Mining Bee (Andrena niveata).

This little Mining bee is a solitary fellow foraging amongst crucifer-rich habitats along cliff tops and heathlands, excavating burrows as its home. As agriculture & erosion have slowly changed this beautiful landscape the bee numbers have declined and it has been listed as rare since 1987.
In 2008 it found a new home when it was spotted on an allotment, foraging amongst a vegetable patch full of crucifer vegetables such as kale, broccoli, cauliflower and sprouts.
This reminds me of some of my fondest memories including Dad’s allotment and the year he produced a bumper crop we named ‘The Giant Cauliflower Harvest’!

Size 21 x 21cm. Vintage Sylko thread, cotton cloth.

The exhibition is open at ACE Arts in Somerton, Somerset from the 8th April – 14th May 2022.

Giant Cauliflower Harvest - embroidered word, red thread about my father and his allotment
Giant Cauliflower Harvest

This piece forms part of a body of work about my Lancashire roots.