Rosemary Campbell PSG :: Moira E Dickson
Windows of Opportunity
Rosemary Campbell
I first met Moira when she became a City & Guilds student at Edinburgh’s Telford College and recognized immediately that she had a lot of potential as she could knit, crochet and had a strong sense of colour. It was during the second part of the Creative Studies course that she had the opportunity to marry these skills with her newly found creativity in embroidery.
As Moira developed we found we had many interests in common and I encouraged her to apply for art college, join the Embroiderers’ Guild and ‘edge-textile artists scotland’, and so it was a natural extension that we became friends.
When I approached Moira to work on this project with me, we discussed what education meant to us. We truly believe education ‘opens doors’ and creates ‘windows of opportunity’ that make for life changing experiences.
We decided to reference our work on Shetland where we were on holiday recently. Moira had a set of doors that she wanted to incorporate along with the traditional knitting of Shetland, while I decided to combine my interest in the imagery and the landscape of Shetland with a discarded window I found there.
Opening Doors
Moira Dickson
My embroidery career began with a phone call to Rosemary Campbell at Edinburgh’s Telford College. On my first day I was asked to draw straight lines without a ruler and thought ‘I’m in the wrong class, what’s this all about?’ But I wasn’t! I went on to attend the college initially on a part time basis, as I was also a part time employee of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
It was at this time that the RBS were expanding with a new administration building planned for the Gyle in Edinburgh. I suggested to Rose to approach the RBS with a proposal for an educational project for the new build. This was the beginning of a new reciprocal relationship.
For me there followed four more years where ‘doors opened’ culminating in me obtaining a degree in textiles from Glasgow School of Art, where I started to experiment with contemporary materials alongside traditional techniques, leading to a body of work based on knitting with wire, and welding and manipulating sheet copper.
‘Windows of Opportunity’ and ‘Opening Doors’ in Creative Dialogues
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