I’m pleased to announce that “Moors of Home ” has been selected by Shannon Skye Robinson curator at Curating Futures, for the Arcadia Exhibition. This virtual exhibition will be available to view from 1st August 2021 via this link.
Arcadia Exhibition Poster
Moors of Home
Size 21 x 27 cm. Hand embroidered and hand stitched with vintage Sylko thread onto cotton cloth Eco printed with leaves and petals from my lockdown garden in Summer 2020.
Screenshot – Inside the gallery
Screenshot – Inside the gallery
Inside the gallery – Moors of Home on the virtual wall
A snapshot of the Exhibiting Artists
“Curating Futures is the brainchild of Shannon Skye Robinson- a curator, designer, and project coordinator.
The project was planned to bring together artists, create a supportive network of like-minded individuals, and generate an inspirational environment for creatives- and their practices- to grow.
The Curating Futures community are a multi-disciplinary group of creative individuals from around the world. We are passionate about art, creativity, culture, and sustainability; together, we work to learn new skills, gain new experiences, and seek new inspiration.
Within our community we collaborate, share ideas, and support one another to produce blogs, workshops, exhibitions and online events.”
One of the many things I have rediscovered in the past year is my love of books and in particular reading Lancashire dialect poetry. This new piece of work titled Worker Bees was designed after reading one of these poems.
A little about ‘Worker Bees’.
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.
The outer border of the piece features an excerpt from a poem by Lancashire Dialect poet W. M. Billington – first published in The Blackburn Times in July 1864. The poem tells the tale of a chap who overslept and was abruptly awoken by the sound of the factory bells. The central panel of worker bees has been symbolic of Manchester’s historic textile industry since 1842.
In the 1800’s Manchester was full of cotton mills and hundreds of hard-working people went to work in these buildings. The mills came to be described as ‘hives of activity’ because they were so busy, and the employees were likened to worker bees as they put so much effort into their jobs.
Reverse of the workWorker BeesHand embroidered words from a poem written in 1864
This piece is 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.
Worker Bees is part of a body of work about my Lancashire roots.
Size 11.75 x 11.75 cm. Hand embroidered and hand stitched using vintage Sylko threads onto cotton cloth which has been eco rust printed.
Update
Worker Bees are off on exhibition with Swiss Fibre Art in Germany and Switzerland.
Update
Worker Bees have been invited to take part in ‘A Tall Order’ at Touchstones Rochdale.
Update
Worker Bees have been accepted for exhibition in Brazil!
‘In Natura‘ is a captivatinggroup art show that delves into the profound beauty and fragile interconnection between humanity and the natural world. As a celebration of the World Environment Day (5 June 2023), the exhibition serves as a powerful platform to raise awareness about pressing environmental issues and promote positive action.
By bringing together 23 artists from 13 different countries, ‘In Natura’ presents a diverse range of perspectives and artistic expressions that transcend borders and cultures. Established and emerging artists are showcased side by side, fostering a vibrant dialogue that illuminates the urgent need for global collaboration in addressing environmental challenges and envisions a future where humans and nature exist in harmonious balance.
This new piece titled ‘A Weaver’s Tale’ is on its way to the Stitch Your Story Exhibition curated by Jamie Chalmers aka Mr X Stitch. The artwork will be mounted into 6 inch embroidery hoops and displayed within Blackburn Cathedral 1-31st October 2021.
Completed piece
The story behind the about the artwork: ‘A Weaver’s Tale’ – The tale of Mary Nixon:
Mary, a weaver and her husband Tom, an overlooker and union steward, worked in one of the many cotton mills in Blackburn.
Job security in the Lancashire Cotton Mills in the late 1890’s was very precarious. Hazardous working conditions brought about the rise of unions. One fight was to add guards on the ends of the shuttle race to prevent the shuttle shooting out of the end of the loom injuring weavers.
After an accident where a weaver was hit in the face with a flying shuttle, there was a call to strike. The union stewards stepped forward and the cotton mills came out on strike insisting shuttle guards were installed. Eventually the mill owners relented, but the union stewards, their wives and any family member who worked in the mills were all blacklisted. None could find work in Blackburn or the surrounding districts.
Mary and Tom found moved their family and found work in Barnoldswick or ‘Barlick’ where their third child Henry was born.
The decline of the cotton mills in the 1930’s meant another move for Tom and Mary this time to a small farm in the Rossendale Valley. Henry married a local girl and had they had a little girl. – That little girl was my mum.
Size 14 x 14 cm. Hand embroidered and hand stitched with DMC stranded embroidery thread on calico.
This piece forms part of a collection of work based on my Lancashire roots.
The final red stitch
Stitch Your Story
“As part of this year’s biennial we are inviting people across the country and hopefully the globe to share their own story of migration and belonging in a crowd-sourced collection of stitched hoops curated by Jamie Chalmers (Mr X Stitch) featuring representations from people’s journeys and reflections on their personal heritage.
Using a 6” hoop stitchers are encouraged to share the stories of where they ended up where they are now. Whether this journey be across continents or down the street, in a literal depiction or an abstract impression, we invite you to share in stitch how you got there and what your place and community means to you now.
Stitchers will be given free rein to express themselves within their hoops, but the outcome will be to share their personal story in stitch with the Textile Biennial audience, with the installation hung in a mass installation as part of the biennial programme.
The collection of pieces will be hung using ceiling suspension and fishing wire to create an installation that visitors can walk through and explore to create a moving exhibition (quite literally as the air movement in the space will cause the hoops to sway) that people can discover and come to learn not only about the places that are represented, but also the global community of stitchers that have participated.”
Stitch Your Story Exhibition is part of a large programme of events for the British Textile Biennial held across Lancashire in October.
