Category: Textiles

  • Playlist for the Week – 21st July 2024

    Each week a curation of audio from Spotify goes alongside the blog. Each of the pieces is chosen to reflect something in the blog, sometimes obviously and sometimes less so. Paying subscribers to Spotify will hear all the tracks, those with a free subscription will hear them with advertising breaks. Anyone else will hear extracts…

  • Maija Kolsi-Mäkelä

    Maija Kolsi-Mäkelä was a Finnish textile designer who caught the imagination of an artist, researcher and writer, Mandy Pedigo. In an article published in 2020 in Surface Design Journal from the Surface Design Association, the writer explains her search for information about the designer after coming across a mention in a small booklet. The article…

  • Thandiwe Muriu

    The Kenyan artist, Thandiwe Muriu, started out in commercial photography but quickly found herself questioning what it means to be a woman through images of strength and beauty. Having struggled in making a way through a male-dominated industry, the artist began to explore portraiture through the use of everyday objects and cloth. In her latest…

  • Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

    In Central Wellington/ Pōneke stands the Cathedral of St Paul. The Cathedral is the result of decades of lobbying, land purchases, interruptions and changes in materials, as well as delays between the architectural plans and the completion of the building. The first stage was finally opened in 1964 (the architect, Cecil Wood, was appointed in…

  • Jeremy Frey

    “Jeremy Frey (b. 1978, Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, Maine) is one of the foremost Passamaquoddy craftspeople of his generation. “

  • Reminiscence and memory

    This week I am in Pōneke Wellington where Festival for the Future, an event to bring young people together, is taking place. While the group I am with is at the Festival I am researching in the National Library for a project to do with oral histories on the Coast. The Library is home to…

  • CTANZ symposium

    The Costume and Textile Association of New Zealand is fast approaching. Here is the latest newsletter from the organisation about it. I am doing a talk about Shetland Tweed and there are plenty of other informative and useful talks and events to be inspired by. https://mailchi.mp/58d3e2113851/ctanz-social-fabric-symposium-2024-i-speaker-line-up?e=cdce4db450

  • Nastassja Swift

    Virginia-based African-American artist, Nastassja Swift, uses fibres to create sculptures and performances that tell stories about “geographical histories, ancestry, ritual practices and community”. In her work, Nastassja Swift uses details to impart knowledge to her audience that this is about and for them. Whether it be hairstyles or gesture, language or iconography, the needle-felted work…

  • Margery Blackman

    Ōtepoti Dunedin Art Gallery is currently hosting an exhibition of tapestries by Margery Blackman. Margery Blackman, Hon Curator and Dave Rapp, Exhibition Designer with Kahu huruhuru with tāniko border, from Te Ika-a-Māui, given to the museum ca 1930. D32.295, Tūhura Otago Museum Collection. Pictured during the installation of Nga Taonga no nga Wahine – Treasures from Maori Women,…

  • Kimathi Mafafo

    Kimathi Mafafo is an artist from the Northern Cape of South Africa. With National Diplomas in Fine Arts and in Film and Video, the artist uses her work to empower women and to question gender stereotypes and inequality in Africa. This page from the Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery shows some of the embroideries that were on…