Calderdale Open 2025

Calderdale Open 2025

I’m pleased to announce that Summer 2022 Part 1 has been selected for the Calderdale Open 2025.

The exhibition’s theme is ‘Nature’ and takes place at the Smith Art Gallery, Halifax Road, Brighouse, Yorkshire, from the 5th July – 6th December 2025.

Calderdale Open 2025

Summer 2022 Part 1

In September 2022 I was invited to an art event at Touchstones Rochdale and took the opportunity to record the thoughts and memories of the people of Rochdale about how they had been affected by the summers’s heatwave.

When I returned home I realised I had enough information to create two artworks – ‘Summer 2022 Part 1 & 2’. These pieces document how everyday lives were afected by the extreme heat, lack of water and the war in Ukraine.

The artworks cover a timeframe from mid-summer through to the 10th September 2022 with the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Summer 2022 Part 1 - part of the Calderdale Open 2025
Summer 2022 Part 1
Summer 2022 Part 1 detail - part of the Calderdale Open 2025
Summer 2022 Part 1 detail

Calderdale Open Judges

Kate Lycett – “My textile design background is always present in the way that I paint, and interpret what is around me. I see patterns in everything; the hills adorned with houses and washing lines, rows of flower pots and stripes of brightly painted drain pipes. Lines of gold thread trace lines through the landscape, and gold leaf changes the surface of my pictures with the changing light of day. I want to paint beautiful pictures of the places that I love. There are never people in my pictures but they’re full of life and warmth.”

Associate Professor Dr Marianna Tsionki – University Curator at Leeds Arts University heading up the Curation and Library department. She is responsible for strategic and operational planning of libraries and curatorial programmes, collections management and research development……Marianna is a curator, researcher and educator working at the intersection of contemporary art, ecology and technology. She is concerned with the role of curatorial and institutional practice in a time of ecological crisis, with particular focus on methodologies of alter-institutionality and critical pedagogy.

Mike Baggs AC Art & Framing – “AC Gallery began life as an art shop in the 1950’s and is now in the 3rd generation of the same family. The business has evolved over the decades, from its early days as an arts and crafts supply shop, to the AC Gallery we have today selling framed prints and originals alongside our expert picture framing service… Now with seven galleries across the north, it’s a long way from the art shop of the 1950’s but the core values have never changed. We are a family business where every customer and every job matters.”

Thank you to curator Eli Dawson and the judges for selecting my work for the exhibition.

Stand Your Ground

House of Smalls

A new exhibition at the House of Smalls called ‘The Ascent of Man’ prompted me to create a new piece of work called ‘Stand Your Ground’ for the Dollhouse gallery. 

The exhibition takes place at The House of Smalls, 103 Henderson Row, Stockbridge, Edinburgh EH3 5BB from the 23rd May – 21st June 2025.

“Oppression, repression and suppression as we lose our rights, our choices, our spaces, this is a call for art from Women who have something to say, to shout, to scream.” ~ The House of Smalls.

Artists taking part on the Dollhouse exhibition
Artists taking part on the Dollhouse exhibition

Stand Your Ground

The exhibition theme made me think of the women in my own family and the good advice I’ve received from them over the years. This is one little nugget – good advice from the strong women in my life.

When it comes to domineering men – “Stand your ground and give as good as you get”.

Stand Your Ground
Stand Your Ground
Stand Your Ground - detail
Stand Your Ground – detail

Size 11.5 x 11.5cm. Hand embroidered with vintage Sylko thread.

This piece forms part of a series of small works created for the House of Smalls.

Update June 2025:

Thank you to Amy at the The House of Smalls for the following Dollhouse exhibition images.

The House of Smalls
The House of Smalls
The House of Smalls
The House of Smalls

Flowers Leaves and Berries

Flowers, Leaves and Berries is a new artwork designed for the Embroiderers’ Guild Members’ Challenge ‘ Colour Rhythms’.

On hearing the theme my first thought was the rhythms of the seasons. My challenge was translating that into cloth and stitch. Each year I spend time in my shed, hand dyeing and contact leaf printing cloth with leaves and flowers from my garden and chose to use some of these natural dyed fabrics in this artwork.

Hand dyed silks
Hand dyed silks

Buckets of water, some old jars and pans, and a pair of Marigold gloves. This is my happy place. Messing about in the shed, preparing cloth for pots of simmering dye and a window bottom full of bejewelled solar dye jars. These natural dyed silks are the result of such a year of playing, and reflect the seasonal rhythm of nature. Each piece was hand dyed from foraged and dried botanicals. The poem around the outside border called ‘Flowers, Leaves and Berries’ are my own words.

Flowers Leaves and Berries
Flowers Leaves and Berries

Size 30 x 30cm. Hand embroidered text onto cotton cloth using vintage Sylko thread. Hand appliqued silk circles using 100 weight Kimono silk thread.

Flowers Leaves and Berries

The central panel of naturally dyed silks formed the starting point for the artwork. I wanted a square panel full of coloured circles – a bit like a sampler – and experimented with different arrangements including spirals before settling on the 5 x 5 format.

Circles arranged in a 5 x 5 format

The outer border features a poem that I wrote specifically for this piece.

Collect old clothes and linens, and odd skeins of thread,
Cut up, wash and rinse them, pile up in the shed,
The fibres of cotton, wool, linen and silk,
Which I’ll mordant with soda ash, alum, and milk.
I sometimes use iron, tea, sumac and try,
The tannins in mordants that help set the dye.
Pick flowers, leaves and berries, roots, seeds and bark,
And make stock pots of colour from light through to dark.
Then modify the fabrics, and peg out on the line,
As my rainbow of colour dries in the sunshine

Flowers, Leaves and Berries by Catherine Hill

Last year I created ‘Good Grub‘ which was awarded ‘Winner of the Beryl Dean Award for Hand Embroidery’ in the Embroiderers’ Guild 2024 Members’ Challenge ‘Opposites Attract’.