What’s so special about tapestry weaving?
One of the great strengths of tapestry weaving is the surfaces that can be created. Each medium has its positives, and with tapestry, yarns can be used in multiple ways to create texture in bas relief or even into the third dimension. Here are a…
Art in the time of coronavirus
With the current pandemic, we are in a life-and-death situation, all feeling isolated and scared. Most of us are doing our best to comply with medical advice and government regulations. We are practising social distancing by staying at home and minimising contact with others. Tapestry…
Stolen Tapestries
In the late 1970s a number of us formed the Scottish Tapestry Artist Group (STAG) to help promote tapestry weaving mainly by having exhibitions. Our shows included the work of both established artists and more recent graduates. We were excited when our third main show…
Can textiles be political?
Joanne Soroka, Another Country, shaped tapestry with tufting The words ‘political’ and ‘textiles’ are not natural bedfellows. Textiles are gentle, feminine and amateur in the general imagination, but some artists like to subvert received opinion and use the apparent disparity to make their point….
How do I become an artist?
The traditional view was that the artist was a genius, a man, who worked in a freezing garret and was devoted only to his art. He was separate from ‘normal’ society, but didn’t care – in fact, he celebrated his superiority to it. Perhaps it…
It’s just not working – what do I do now? Revising tapestries
With some media, it’s easy to correct mistakes. But with tapestry, if you change your mind about something or realise it is just not working, it can mean tediously having to unweave many days’ or even weeks’ work or having to cut out the offending…
What’s So Funny?
Tapestry is thought of as a serious discipline, historically used to impress its audience by showing the might, taste and prestige of its owners. Or it could cow viewers into submission by frightening them with images of the Apocalypse, suggesting that they should turn from…
The resurgence of tapestry
Happily we have seen a resurgence of interest in textiles as art in recent years. Great – but why is it happening now? We know that textiles have often been viewed as craft and that the practitioners have mainly been women – two strikes against…
How to make a tapestry about Islamophobia
I wanted to respond to Islamophobia, one of the great evils of our age. Along with everyone I know, I was horrified by the Christchurch mosque shootings on 15 March, and the following day I was at the Cordis Prize for Tapestry conference, where Lesley…
Are textiles art or craft – what the critics say
Those of us who create tapestries in the widest sense of the term consider that we are making art. However we are often annoyed or even angered by the way our work is perceived, especially by those who should know better, the art critics. Here…