The idea of group projects in textile art is nothing new - people have been coming together to sew for centuries, and quilters often work together on projects such as 'story quilts'. But recently the trend has increased in popularity - textile artists regularly share ideas and work sociably, from simple one-to-one collaborations with friends to ambitious community projects and ongoing textile-art groups.
Well-known textile artists Cas Holmes and Anne Kelly have been involved in a very productive collaboration for several years, and also devise and run community textile-art events and gallery exhibitions, both together and separately. In this fascinating book, they present an invaluable guide to working collaboratively, in both small and large groups. They provide useful information on setting up groups, finding venues, establishing ground rules and working methods, and staging group exhibitions, plus a wealth of practical information for ways to work together - working on one project at the same time, swapping pieces between different people, creating different variations on a theme, developing work by means of joint sketchbooks, and even working postally or online. They also demonstrate how working with other artists can have a positive influence on your own personal work.
Illustrated with many examples of work produced collaboratively, this thought-provoking book will help you connect with other textile artists and take your own work beyond the personal.
About the Author: Cas Holmes is one of UK's most renowned textile artists. She exhibits widely and runs courses at West Dean College in West Sussex. She is the author of Textile Landscape, Stitch Stories, The Found Object in Textile Art and Connected Cloth, also published by Batsford. She has also written for magazines and websites including Embroidery, The Quilter and TextileArtist and for the The Festival of Quilts. She lives in Maidstone, Kent.
Anne Kelly is a textile artist and tutor. She trained in Canada and the UK and now teaches and speaks to guilds and groups. Her work is exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, including private collections in the UK and abroad, the Vatican Collection in Rome and at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto. She was recently artist-in-residence at Sussex Prairies Garden in West Sussex and exhibited at the international World of Threads Festival and the Prague Patchwork Meeting. She is the co-author of Connected Cloth, also published by Batsford.
