Category: Art

  • Weave and music

    The links between weaving and music are strong. In this fascinating article Eleanora Giglione explores some of the ideas that bring weaving, looms and music together.

  • Scott Norris

    A visitor to the studio in Māwhera/ Greymouth this week spoke about a friend, Scott Norris, who weaves words and images in labours of love. Scott Norris lives in Massachusetts in the United States, and works in a converted garage at Elam’s Widow. Fascinated by words and stories, Norris weaves images – vignettes of past…

  • Conserving Degas

    When it comes to textiles, conservation of art works requires care and meticulous attention to detail, not to mention hours of research. This video from 2018 by the Metropolitan Museum of New York explains how costume conservator, Glenn Peterson, worked on “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer” by Degas so that it could continue to be displayed.…

  • Vadim Mikhailov

    A recent news article in the New York Times drew attention to Vadim Mikhailov, a protest artist who works with textiles. Repurposing cloth, carpets, costume and the like has long been the stock-in-trade of those who protest against what they perceive as injustice: Brazilian-Swiss artist, Eva de Souza, for example, or Korean-born Aram Han Sifuentes…

  • Make a decorated egg

    Mr X Stitch often features work by textile artist, Christine Cunningham, and here is a post about making a decorated textile egg for the season.

  • Winter workshops

    This winter the studio will be busy with classes and workshops. On Sunday 24th May we are going to be looking at twills, those fascinating structures that we are familiar with from the diagonal lines in denim. Twills are used in houndstooth, in diamonds, in triangles and many other patterns. The 13th June is a…

  • It’s barkcloth…

    Barkcloth is probably familiar to most readers of the blog but maybe not these textiles. Barkcloth is made by pounding inner tree bark over a hard surface until the fibres mesh together. Across the globe barkcloth is produced in this way and the studio collection has examples from Africa and the Pacific. This map shows…

  • Chiharu Shiota

    The Japanese artist, Chiharu Shiota, was born in Osaka, lives in Berlin and exhibits her astonishing artworks around the world. Shiota, often inspired by something that has happened to her, uses woollen thread to engulf, hide, reveal and explore objects and spaces, creating massive artworks of tangled yarn. These works are simultaneously fragile and strong,…

  • Fire-fighting in Japan

    During the Edo Period (1600s to the mid-19th Century) Japan enjoyed peace and prosperity. This was reflected in fire-fighters’ protective clothing. Utilitarian clothes that protected the wearer while they were putting out the fires that could easily spread across the tightly-packed wooden buildings of towns and cities were an important part of a fire fighter’s…

  • Jean-Claude Bissery

    A new window display for autumn features a printed hanging by the French artist, Jean-Claude Bissery. Known for his use of vibrant colour and design, the piece hanging in the studio is entitled “Boucheron”, which translates as “woodcutter”. In the image a man strides through a forest filled with autumnal leaves, carrying a cut tree…