Jenny Bullen PSG :: Amanda Clayton
Organic Cloth
Our collaboration emphasises how important the dialogue is between like-minded people who have a similar visual language of stitch and mark-making.
We have explored our responses to the changes that happen as we stitch which can never be planned even with a lifetime of experience. Although we draw, collect and think about our work beforehand, we both work intuitively, not happy until we begin to stitch. This way of working, and our obsession with cloth and stitch and the qualities of our materials has inspired our partnership.
Amanda Clayton
I am obsessed by the inherent qualities of cloth and the looseness of marks which can be achieved so purely with a needle and thread. Current work reflects my surroundings, senses and previous visual experiences interpreted by exploring edges, line, weight, distortion, bias and translucency. Any preconceptions are constantly challenged. I don’t normally pre-plan. The experiments become the work as I intuitively explore and invent as I work, using a wealth of imagery and ideas around me including drawings. My stitch samples are incorporated into the finished work.
Jenny Bullen
My work is inspired and informed by themes of landscape, old and worn textiles and an abiding love of stitched textiles. Through drawing, printmaking and stitch I aim to produce work that questions and challenges the use of handstitch.
I intended to base my work solely on drawings of textiles but my continuing use of both a sense of place and textiles as inspiration coincide and interchange, the textiles turning to landscape and vice versa. This is never planned but often happens, both in my stitched textiles and etched and collographic prints on paper.
The preparation and selection of the cloth as my work progresses is very important to me; finding and sorting cloth that I had forgotten I owned. Tearing cloth is very exciting, the hiss as I rip and that ragged, twisted, torn and frayed edge is the artwork.
previous – Bobby Britnell : : : top : : : next – Sarah Burgess