EXTREME WEAVING for The BIG DRAW, The National Wool Museum, Drefach Felindre, 7th October 2017

Big Draw Living Lines - EXTREME WEAVING!

7 October 10am – 3pm National Wool Museum, Drefach Felindre, SA44 5UP

The Big Draw promotes the universal language of drawing as a tool for learning, expression and invention. For as long as we’ve been able to draw we’ve been depicting motion: from prehistoric cave paintings of charging bison through magic lanterns and shadow puppets to stop-motion, digital technology and social media GIF’s.

For the Big Draw 2017 Oriel Myrddin and The National Wool Museum will be inviting people to join in creating a collaborative giant woven work of art with myself. Weather permitting , the plan is to weave around the big tenterhook frame that is outside the Museum.  If too wet, we'll be doing large scale in-situ weaving in the Long Gallery inside the Museum instead. Wherever it may be, this wild weaving extravaganza will be filmed and become a time lapse film which will be shown at Oriel Myrddin Gallery.

CALL OUT FOR HELP! Weaver / textile / fashion friends - I'm going to need a LOT of material to make this giant woven textile.  The plan is for this to be mostly made from recycled and re-purposed materials including loom waste.  If you have any warp 'thrums' (the last bit of warp that can't be woven) would you be willing to donate them to the project?  The palette is going to be typically Welsh - grey, black, red and white/ecru/undyed. I'd also be interested in any waste natural fabrics that are in this colour palette that I could cut into strips to weave with.  If you can help - please drop me a line and I can send you my postal address info at laurathomas dot co dot uk HUGE THANK YOU!

A Darker Thread, 15th July - 21st Oct 2017

I'm delighted to share with you my latest curation project, A Darker Thread, which opens at Oriel Myrddin Gallery, Carmarthen on the 15th July at 2pm.  You are warmly invited to join us when the exhibition will be opened by the noted artist and academic Angela Maddock.

About the exhibition:

A Darker Thread 

Wales has a much celebrated tradition of creating both utilitarian and decorative textiles of distinctive design.  From power-loomed blankets to hand stitched quilts, textiles are a key part of Welsh visual culture and history.

Whilst ‘A Darker Thread’ takes this heritage as its starting point, twelve contemporary artists, designers and makers have been invited to exhibit work which subverts these expectations. 

Exhibitors have been selected for their focus on the curious, the provocative, the humorous, or the unpredictable. Some work might still feel comfortably familiar through its materiality or typically ‘Welsh’ colour palette of black, ecru and red; much hopefully, does not.

The work all consciously or subconsciously references and questions Welsh culture or sense of place: its language, folk tales, music, landscape, industrial past or contemporary subcultures. A variety of making processes are exemplified, but all make use of thread in some form.  

Exhibitors: Alana Tyson, EleriMills, Indre Eujenija Dunn, Jayne Pierson in collaboration with Neale Howells, Laura Thomas, Llio James, Philippa Lawrence, Rhiannon Williams, RozanneHawksley, Ruth Harries, Sally-Ann Parker and Spike Dennis.

To compliment the exhibition, the gallery shop featured maker is Stephen Hughes who is showcasing his new collection of luxurious digitally printed scarves.

There is also a rich programme of events running alongside the exhibition, which you can see detailed below: