Whenever we start a new year, it's a chance for new resolutions, fresh starts and new ways of looking at things. Of course we don't have to have a "new year" to do those things. We can start afresh at any time of the year and at any point of the day. It's all about making a decision to do so.
I was talking with a lovely person recently -Brid. She is a wise lady. I listen and learn from her. And so my resolution is to listen to others more. "Pete will be delighted!" I said!
He doesn't know that is my decision for 2022. It comes on the back of so many things that I have been thinking about recently.
In a world where so much is about "Me" isn't it time for "We"?
In October the "Quilts for Care Leavers" event we ran in October showed how powerful it is when we care enough to give time for others.
I know so many quilters who give their time for others. Quilters are such wonderful people. Thank you if you are one of those who takes the time to make and give time to others. We never know the impact on the individual but when someone hasn't felt cared for it can be very empowering indeed. The power of a positive message goes far beyond the person it first touched.My Mother stopped quilting a few years ago so over New Year I sorted through some of her beautiful fabrics and part-completed tops to donate them to the local Pershore group. When I took a "Thank you" card and chocolates (always a winner with my Mother!) to her from Sharon and Pauline she became emotional. Their beautiful card thanked her for her generosity in donating fabrics that will go to some wonderful charities that the local group are making quilts for in 2022. One of the charities makes quilts for women who are being trafficked into London, some with their children and babies. There are so many worthwhile groups out there and for every individual we touch, as Brid reminded me this week, it's like a light that we have lit. Beautiful.
News of Events in 2022
Press release from Pauline and Charlie Poulsen about their exhibition in 2022
“DRAWING PARALLELS"
by
Pauline Burbidge & Charlie Poulsen
Textiles & Drawing
from
9th April – early July 2022
We will be showing a completely new body of work, especially made over the last five years, to show in this exquisite contemporary gallery in North Wales, one of the finest exhibition spaces in the UK.
We will be showing approximately 16 large scale drawings, (153 cms square), 12 large scale textile works, (many are 2 metre square), smaller sculptural works, box framed textile studies and small framed drawings.
We will have 2 screen presentations, a commissioned short film by David Martin, and a PowerPoint showing Charlie’s current sculptural projects at Marchmont House.
We have had several very memorable joint exhibitions. The earliest was “Joining Forces” at the Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, in 1993, and the most recent very successful show “Songs for Winter” at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre in 2017 / 18, which attracted over 13,000 visitors.
There have been many solo shows, recent examples are; for Pauline in 2016, The Bowes Museum, Co Durham, and the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. For Charlie in 2019, the Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham, and Messums, Wiltshire, UK. (Messums now represent him).
Over the past 28 years, we have lived at Allanbank Mill Steading in the Scottish Borders. We have developed and nurtured our annual OPEN STUDIO, which today is an extremely successful and much anticipated summer event. Visitors experience seeing our home and studios where we make our artwork. We turn the buildings and garden into one large showing area, but space is still limited as our works are large in scale, so we welcome a chance to show our work in the Ruthin Craft Centre.
Drawing is at the heart of both our practices, using paper & pencil; fabric & stitch.
Charlie works first in sketchbooks and small drawings, then moving to the large pieces. He creates his drawings from fine pencil and wax lines and gouache washes.
The abstract networks often echo the natural environment around him, although he does not work with observational studies, but rather with the unseen energies and elements that he senses around him, often creating a visual image that holds a lot of depth and appears to be multi layered. Music plays an important role in his studio, and often the dancing lines reflect the atmosphere of music. Charlie has also chosen to show a few sculptures titled ‘Waxworks’, he thinks of them as 3D drawings. They are made from various materials, folded paper, catalogues, or even household rubbish, all encased in wax.
Pauline often begins her work by making simple line drawings in sketchbooks, to record plant forms and landscape. She works directly with observation, and makes simplified studies, often working through a paper window to intensify marks made. These can be developed to a much larger scale and drawn, with the use of a fabric crayon, directly onto cloth. Both hand and machine stitching play an important role in the work. With the use of her Handi Quilter long-arm machine, she draws free-hand, over the whole surface of the quilt, often referring to continuous line drawings collected earlier in her sketch books. Collage, print (cyanotype and mono print) and stitch, play an important role in the development of her ‘Textile Landscapes’. The quilts are double-sided and will be hung to be viewed from both sides, the stitching has a very different ‘voice’ front or back.
We both find the use of words unsatisfactory to describe our work, we love the idea that visual language has its own identity which speaks for itself. When we are working we are not engaging with the spoken word. Perhaps we are a little like musicians communicating through their sound – we use our improvised visual marks, colour and tone to make chords and harmony.
Why show the work together?
The scale of our work links well, these are bold statements which naturally have a strong thread of commonality.
Although we are working with different materials i.e. paper/fabric, gouache/cyanotype print, we hold many driving forces in common. We both use formal structures of grids, stripes and squares in our work which is mostly concerned with abstraction. A strong link to a sense of place geographically, the natural world, our rural surroundings are very important to us. We share a daily routine, a common drive and sense of determination to put our artwork first, and a common appreciation of art. The drawn line and mark making feed our works. A sense of depth and of building up visual layers appears in both our works, be it in the layers of wax, gouache and pencil lines, or the transparent printed, drawn and stitched layers. We love the physicality of making from actual materials, and very much hope that viewers will appreciate the visual celebration and lively energy of the mark making. Whether it’s a pencil drawn line, dancing across the paper or layers of delicate printed cyanotype and stitching, that catches your attention, we hope to inspire and enthuse you.
Photo list and credits: 14 images:
1. Portrait of Pauline Burbidge, 2021. Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
2. ‘Fern Strata’ 149 x 147 cm by Pauline Burbidge, 2019. Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
3. ‘Global Horizon’ 205 x 202 cm by Pauline Burbidge, 2020. Photo Phil Dickson, psd
photography.
4. ‘Re-told Stories: Pitt Rivers Legacy’ (Reverse side), 211 x 208 cm, by Pauline Burbidge, 2020.
Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
5. Detail of ‘Re-told Stories: Pitt Rivers Legacy’ by Pauline Burbidge, 2020. Photo Phil Dickson,
psd photography.
6. Detail of ‘Wild Barley’ by Pauline Burbidge, 2018. Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
7. Detail of ‘Plantlife:Puglia’ by Pauline Burbidge, 2021. Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
8. Portrait of Charlie Poulsen, 2017, Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
9. ‘15 th November 2021 Allanbank Series 3’, 153 cm square, by Charlie Poulsen. Photo Charlie
Poulsen.
10. ‘10 th November 2020 Allanbank Series 2’, 153 cm sq. by Charlie Poulsen. Photo Phil Dickson,
psd photography.
11. ‘20 th February 2020 Allanbank Series 2’, 153 cm sq. by Charlie Poulsen. Photo Phil Dickson,
psd photography.
12. Detail of ‘20 th February 2020’, by Charlie Poulsen. Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
13. ‘19 th June 2021Allanbank Series 3’, 153 cm sq.by Charlie Poulsen. Photo Charlie Poulsen.
14. ‘Waxwork V’ 30 x 30 x 9 cm, 2016, by Charlie Poulsen. Photo Phil Dickson, psd photography.
The two quilts listed below will be on show in this exhibition:
Pauline Burbidge Quilts will donate 12.5% of the sale price of “Re-told Stories: Pitt Rivers Legacy”
to The Wildlife Trusts, registered Charity No 207238.
www.wildlifetrusts.org
and
Pauline Burbidge Quilts will donate 15% of the sale price of
“Before the Dinosaurs” quilt to Plantlife International – the wild plant Conservation Charity.
www.plantlife.org.uk
For further information on Pauline and Charlie please visit their websites - Allanbank Mill Steading – www.allanbankmillsteading.co.uk
Charlie Poulsen – www.charlespoulsenartwork.co.uk
Pauline Burbidge – www.paulineburbidge-quilts.com
Pauline Burbidge, email = pburbidgequilts@gmail.com
Charles Poulsen, email = charliepoulsen14@gmail.com
Drawing Parallels is
Sponsored by Pinhole Quilting
"Threads Through Creation" by Jacqui Parkinson
Threads through Creation is a spectacular sequence of twelve huge textile panels. It's an exuberant retelling of the creation story in the book of Genesis, a retelling which visitors will find both moving and breathtaking. Viewers are treated to a wonderful variety of colours, shapes and patterns - and of course lots of creatures!
The exhibition is one of the largest textile projects by a single artist, ever. It has taken Jacqui nearly three years. It follows on from "Threads through Revelation", her first huge exhibition which visited 14 cathedrals from 2016 to 2018 and was seen by more than 500,000 visitors.
An extensive tour of UK cathedrals is being planned from 2021 to 2024.
Jacqui uses a Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen which she purchased in 2012 and which has now done over 19 million stitches.
Liz remembers Jacqui walking past the Handi Quilter stand at Alexandra Palace in London and stopping dead in her tracks, backing up and asking what the machine was! She tried it out for quite a while, free motion quilting with it and asking lots of questions, explaining that she was a textile artist rather than a quilter, that she needed to do large bed sheets with multiple layers, could it handle that? "Well, yes", we said, ", it can!"
So Jacqui bought the Sweet Sixteen at the Ally Pally show and ten years later she is still creating incredible works of art with it.
She visited our Pinhole Quilting showroom for the first time in January 2022 with her husband to have the Sweet Sixteen serviced. They were amazed at how many longarms we had in our showroom and teaching space and how much our business has grown since we spoke to them when "Threads through Revelation" was being launched 5 years ago.
"People need to know that you can do really large pieces on these sitdown machines," Jacqui said. We couldn't have said it better ourselves and the proof is in the scale of these pieces.
We hope that our customers and many quilters get the opportunity to see these for themselves. They really are incredible works of art and the creativity is simply stunning.
We took pictures of Jacqui's pevious exhibition "Threads through "Revelation" which you can view on our photo sharing site here.
Planned Touring Dates.
Please check dates on cathedral web sites as they may change
2022
12th January to 1st March - CHESTER CATHEDRAL
4th March to 24th April - SOUTHWELL MINSTER
27th April to 5th June - WORCESTER CATHEDRAL
8th June to 24th July - EXETER CATHEDRAL
27th July to 3rd September - ST EDMUNDSBURY CATHEDRAL
6th September to 16th October - GUILDFORD CATHEDRAL
19th October to 20th November - RIPON CATHEDRAL
2023
8th February to 19th March - to be announced
22nd March to 30th April - PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL tbc
3rd May to 11th June - ST ALBANS tbc
14th June to 3rd July - to be announced
26th July to 3rd September - ROCHESTER
6th September to 15th October - PORTSMOUTH tbc
Link to Jacqui's Threads Through Creation
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