CETG Meeting on Monday 11th March 2019

Our Speaker - Jae Maries, 62 Group Textile Artists

Her Subject - Contrasting Elements

 

Here is an overview of Jae’s talk and some photographs taken on the night.

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Jae’s talk was all about how to bring contrast into our textile work – to make it more dynamic, interesting, and more personal.   

She gave lots of examples of contrast:

 

Opposites – day and night, solid and fluid, high and low

Materials – cotton and silk, sheers and solids, paint and stitch

Techniques – knitting and printing, applique and weaving

Subtle contrasts – using complementary colours, changing scale of stitches, blank areas and busy areas, geometric shapes and flowing organic lines

Subject matter – industrial buildings and flowers, lonely homeless person set against a busy city

 

In her slide show Jae talked us through a variety of her own work and that of others in the 62 Group including Louise Baldwin, Michelle House, Dawn Dupree, Elizabeth Couzins-Scott, Hazel Bruce, Michael Brennand-Wood, Helen Banzhaf, Hannah Streefkerk and Fiona Rutherford. Many pieces combined different shapes, geometric and organic, also grids, knitting, weaving and applique. Some work was abstract - representing feelings, meanings and character in stitch.  

 

Jae then explained a little more about her techniques including couching using a variety of different sizes of threads and building up texture in the pieces.

 

Finally, her advice to us when starting a new piece of work was to take time to think first. What adjective best describes it? For example, will it be colourful, elegant, abstract, active or quiet? Remember what attracted you to the subject. Can you add layers to give it depth and more contrast to make it dynamic and personal?

 

Jae had brought along many examples of her work - fairly large pieces on topical subjects including knife crime and sea pollution. These combined a variety of techniques - oil painting on washed calico, hand and machine embroidery.  After her talk, we were all given time to see Jae’s work up close and ask more questions about her techniques.

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All photos © Liz Smith / text © Linda Hillyer