Wednesday 24 August 2022

September Speaker

 

Kate Findlay is our speaker in September.  Her talk is entitled "Working in Series".

Kate is self employed as a textile artist and teacher. She lives with her partner and son in Berkshire, and has a studio at home on the second floor which gives her plenty of exercise up and down the stairs!

She trained in industrial textiles at Kidderminster College and worked in the carpet industry for a few years before retraining as a teacher. Kate taught Design Technology and Art in secondary schools for many years, before getting a job as an art teacher in a private primary school after her son was born. It was working part time here that allowed her own art to develop.

Kate produced a body of work inspired by the Large Hadron Collider. These were all textile pieces, with a number of large art quilts being the culmination of nearly five years of work. The series was exhibited widely and attracted international interest. In reaction to the scale and subject matter, Kate then turned to the natural world for inspiration and began a series of very small pieces inspired by birds, which has gradually grown to encompass a great variety of wildlife, and also landscapes and woodlands on a larger scale.

Kate travels the country giving talks and workshops based on all her work – and her ongoing interest in e-textiles and the use of other media. She has work in a number of Galleries, and exhibits at Art Fairs and Craft events throughout the year.

Making art is a complete passion and is probably the most important thing in her life right now!

Monday 8 August 2022

July Meeting

 Karen Lane said how she had started crafting when she went to some craft classes to support a young girl she was working with.  The girl enjoyed the class and this lead to more classes.  Karen was hooked on crafting for herself as well.

She started with felt making and tried a range of techniques and then moved on to mixed media as well.  She had a beautiful display of all her different crafts and went through them explaining the different techniques she used and how they were the individual items were made.  This included the techniques which would be used in the workshop on the following day.





Jan Gamble and Gina Cooke's pictures from the workshop which was thoroughly enjoyed.