The Knitting and Stitching Show

A question of repair - Part Two Right now as you are reading this post, I will not be chained to my desk at my usual home location....I will be at The Spring Knitting and Stitching Show! So I can't feedback on it yet (don't worry, I will fill you in next month!) So this issue, I promised to look at a few other artists who had used the repair theme within their work: Jenni Dutton Was anyone lucky enough to see her exhibition at The Knitting and Stitching Shows last year? One of her portraits of her mother, taken from her collection The Dementia Darnings. What's the work about? Let the artist herself answer: 'The Darnings were started in 2011 whilst I was a carer for my mum who was developing dementia. As I began to have some understanding of the illness and how it developed, we explored ways of engaging with the past, often looking at old photo albums. I started to use stitching to ‘draw’ likenesses of family members onto a sculpture of a long dress I had made from dress netting. She recognised these familiar faces and enjoyed watching me create these simple portraits.' The name includes the word darn, which is really a form of repair. We can only imagine the emotional connection she must have with this work, but maybe the act of making it was a form of repair for her. Check out more via her website: www.jennidutton.com What about you? There are of course loads of very obvious messages out there, some you can have a go doing yourself: Find this one over on this website, by The Stranded Stitch. Claire Wellesley-Smith We recently reviewed her book, check out the review via this link. You can buy it right here! This artist teaches us how the act of stitching can be a form of repair in itself. Hand sewing may seem time consuming, yet it can be a great way of taking a break and distracting ourselves. Okay, so there are hundreds of artists worth noting who I have not included. This is just a snapshot. However it shows how many different ways we can explore the same subject. Now it is your turn. Can you think of artists who use this theme? Is it something you want to try yourself? Till next time...