Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture, Brown Grotta Arts

I was delighted to recently have the above new work included in the Brown Grotta Arts exhibition entitled Retro/Prospective: 25+ Years of Art Textiles and Sculpture  A subtly gradating palette of about 20 different yarns in cotton, silk, rayon and lurex was used in my trademark 'Loose Threads' arrangement. The threads are encapsulated in acrylic resin and cast into a gently curved arc. The exhibition can now be viewed online - do go check out the inspirational gallery photographs and, as ever, I'm rather humbled to have work seen alongside some seminal names in the world of fibre art.

With thanks to the Arts Council of Wales: this work was made as part of my Creative Wales Ambassador Award.

Buy handmade Christmas presents this year.....

Have got several new pieces of work in this years Christmas exhibition at Craft in the Bay 'Seren Arian' ('Silver Star') here in Cardiff.

There is also a great range of work from the other Members of the Makers Guild in Wales alongside a select group of other invited designer-makers.

The show will be opened this Friday by Nick Capaldi, the Chief Exectutive of the Arts Council of Wales this Friday the 13th November at 6pm. The show then runs until the 3rd January 2010, opening every day from 10.30-5.30pm.

This show also coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Makers Guild in Wales, so it'll be a double celebration.

Makers Guild in Wales
Craft in the Bay
The Flourish
Lloyd George Avenue
Cardiff
CF10 4QH

Tel: 029 2048 4611

E-mail: admin@makersguildinwales.org.uk

Hope to see you there!

Creative Wales Ambassador Award at Ruthin Craft Centre

Earlier this year I was the recipient of a Creative Wales Ambassador Award from the Arts Council of Wales. This Award is supporting the development of several new bodies of work over the next two years. Ruthin Craft Centre in North Wales was my nominating 'host' organisation for the award and as part of developing my working relationship with them, I am spending approx one week per month 'in residence' at one of their studios.

I'm using this opportunity to get away from the day-to-day distractions of 'normal' life here in Cardiff to get on was some uninterrupted thinking, planning and designing and to formalise the structure of my planned projects.

I spent my week in residence during September working in a very uninhibited way primarily exploring colour proportions and relationships. Its was also interesting to reflect upon the fact that it became a great deal easier and more natural to think on a bigger scale in a large, white, empty studio space - quite a contrast to my dark, crowded studio here in Cardiff!

Anyway, here's a few pictures from that first week in September.....

.... I got through a lot of paint that week!

Ashes Vessel

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, I was recently commissioned to design and make a celebratory vessel to commemorate the Ashes coming to Cardiff for the first time. On Thursday 9th July the vessel was presented by the Welsh Assembly Minister for Sport, Alun Ffred Jones to Dr John Bannon, director of Cricket Australia, at a media reception at Cardiff Castle.

The Ashes Vessel, was commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government in partnership with the Arts Council of Wales and Safle - public art Wales. The vessel takes its inspiration from the spin of a cricket ball and will not only be a commemoration of the first test match to take place in Wales, but also a symbol of friendship between Wales and Australia. The vessel will then be displayed in the prestigious Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

This commission is the first piece of work that I have made that moves away from my previous geometric forms into a more fluid aesthetic. The vessel which measures 55x18cm, contains 33 taut, twisted hand woven ribbons in gold Lurex and black cotton. As the ribbons cast their shadows on the surface below, the layered twists and turns have dramatic visual impact that changes as you move your vantage point around the piece.

Alun Ffred Jones said:
"The presentation of this artwork means that Australia are guaranteed a trophy whatever happens in the rest of the Ashes series! The form of the piece seems suggestive to me of the flow of a closely-fought test match, with high points at the beginning and end and with twists and turns throughout its course. In that way, I hope that it reflects this first test match in Wales and brings back fond memories of the event for our Australian visitors."

David Alston, Arts Director for Arts Council of Wales, said:
"Arts Council of Wales is delighted to be a part of The Ashes Vessel Artist's Commission. Laura Thomas, an exceptional young artist, who recently received a Creative Wales Ambassadors Award, has created a stunning piece of work which is a fitting reminder of this momentous occasion for Wales."

Below are some stunning photographs taken by Kutchibok Design showing the piece from various angles:







And here we have some photo's from the Media Reception at Cardiff Castle. These photographs are courtesy of Steve Pope of Sporting Wales and must not be reproduced without his express permission. Please contact him directly if you want to use these images: steve@sportingwales.com

Ruthin Craft Centre shortlisted for the Art Fund Prize

The Ruthin Craft Centre has been short-listed for The Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries 2009.

The Art Fund Prize of £100,000 is the largest single arts prize in the UK and recognises and rewards the best new development of the previous calendar year in a museum or gallery, large or small, anywhere in the United Kingdom.

On Front Row Lord Puttnam said, "Ruthin Craft Centre is a lovely surprise, everyone who'd been there was knocked sideways by it, and it got four votes very quickly. It is run by people with amazing commitment and a historical commitment to arts in North Wales – the thing's got it all actually – it is the sort of thing you would like to see replicated in every single region and community in the Country".

There are 4 galleries short-listed and this year one of the eight votes to judge the winner of the Prize will come from the public.

The winner of this People's Choice will count as the eighth vote when the panel of seven judges make their decision on the winner in June.

Please visit The Guardian website and give your support to Ruthin Craft Centre. It really is remarkable gallery for Wales and the UK as a whole to be proud of. Exhibitions of the highest quality are complimented by exceptional publications in a remarkable architectural space. Its true I may be a little biased, but I really do think that it would be an well deserved accolade for the Ruthin team and the contemporary craft sector in general.

Good news x 3......

Well, maybe good things really do happen in three's....

Firstly I'm really delighted to announce that on the 29th April 2009, I was one of four recipients of a Creative Wales Ambassador Award from the Arts Council of Wales. 'This new award scheme is part of the Arts Council of Wales's Beacon scheme for individual artists and organisations. Funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, the aim of the Creative Wales Ambassadors Awards is to recognise significant individual achievement in the arts, to raise the profile of Welsh culture outside of Wales and to provide financial support to enable the artist to develop a new programme of work.'

Exciting creative projects lie ahead of me now, that I may not have been able to readily explore if it were not for the opportunity afforded to me by this Award. I am looking forward with enthusiasm to getting started with a new body of work which will see me creating more ambitious, larger scale works for exhibition in my host organisations, Ruthin Craft Centre and Brown Grotta Arts in the USA. Amongst the other threads of my work, I will also be forging closer links with architectural design research partners and working with Welsh mills on a design-art collection, which will all be complimented by my ongoing curatorial and education activity in Wales.

Secondly, I have just been awarded a commission to produce a 'vessel' to be presented to the Australian Cricket delegation when the first Ashes match is played in Cardiff this summer.

And lastly, I am delighted that I have once again been accepted to exhibit at Origin, the Crafts Council Show at Somerset House in October later this year.

Aside from all that excitement, this last month really has been a flurry of activity. Alongside my usual teaching on the BA Contemporary Textiles course in the West Wales School of the Arts, I have being running a series of 'Architextiles' workshops in the Welsh School of Architecture with Dr Wayne Forster. This has been an immensely enjoyable challenge encouraging first and second year architecture students to explore and draw upon the textile fundamentals of colour, pattern, texture and structure, to generate conceptual architectural proposals for a 'wonder wall'.

After appealing for help with my Architextiles research on the Weave-tech forum, I had a huge number of emails from interested weavers around the world into this activity, so I'm intending to record this series of workshops in a forthcoming blog once the project is completed.

I am also continuing to work on my first curation project 'The Warp and the Weft', which will be a group exhibition at the Oriel Myrddin Gallery in Carmarthen in 2010. I will be co-curating this with Meg Anthony, the Oriel Myrddin curator. The concept of the exhibition is to highlight 'unexpected' woven textiles. Exhibitors may use 'unexpected' aesthetics or perhaps integrate 'unexpected' technology into their textiles. At the end of this month Meg and I will be visiting the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham is select a piece by Peter Collingwood from the recently acquired archive of his work.

As for this weekend, after giving a talk on my work to the Bristol Embroidery Guild, I am looking forward to squeezing in a visit to COLLECT and the Stroud International Textiles Festival......

Until next time..... L x