In contrast to the seminar on Friday I went to an entertaining talk at Craft in the Bay by Mr X Stitch. Jamie Chalmers has been stitching for over ten years and he introduced us to Jamie’s world where embroidery and stitch have become subversive. With high energy, lots of jokes and engaging with his audience throughout he rattled through over a hundred images in an hour and introduced me to several artists.
Stacey Page Melanie
Frederique Morrel Deer
Bethany Walker
Barbara Randall
So there we are, thirty five artists – I’ve not included all I saw as not all of the work appealed to me. I find some of the art ‘flat’ – that it has no voice of the artist coming through; maybe because several use digital technology. Others I’m unsure of as it doesn’t appear to be original in concept but then it’s difficult to establish who depicted the idea first. The use of bad language and sexually explicit content seems to be an easy way to be noticed, if only for the shock value but again, how original is that?
Dorcas Pennyfather 