Anne Kelly – Park Walk Birds Series

During the current pandemic, our lives have become truncated and our journeys are mainly close to home. I explored my first project created during lockdown in a previous post for Mr. X Stitch which you can find here.

As it became clear that many of my teaching commitments for the rest of 2021 were being postponed or moving online, I decided to join the Artist Support Pledge. The idea is that you sell your work, any pieces under £ 200, online and when you have sold over £ 1000 you buy another artists’ work valued at around £ 200. I was delighted at the response to my work in this worthy scheme and have been able to help several other artists and makers out as a result. I have also been giving 10% of my sales to my local foodbank.

I take daily walks in my local park – the Hilbert and Grosvenor Recreation Ground. It has been transformed thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant into a beautiful wetland with separate areas for site specific activities.

I decided to make a series of bird embroideries based on the birds and plants that I see on my walks.

I collected discarded plant material from the park and used it as a direct stencil on a small screen I use for printing. I printed the plant images using a diluted printing ink onto old linen remnants.

I then hand stitched the birds and finished them with some machine embroidery.

I was delighted that most of them have flown away to new homes!

They are a special record of this unique time and it was good to be able to observe the local plants and natural world around us. Since I made this series of work, my fourth book for Batsford ‘Textile Travels’ has been released.

There are several workshops in it for making sketchbooks, and working whilst on the go.