My Maker Membership is all about creative growth – learning new things, looking at your own work in new ways, connecting and sharing with others and taking your creative practice forward. I have invited current Membership to share their work in a new online exhibition focussing on how they have grown creatively through the membership and the community of other makers. I wanted to offer members an opportunity to show their work (some have not exhibited or shared their work at all before), to have a deadline to finish a new piece and to see what the others in the group have been working on. I am so pleased and proud to present a very eclectic but highly creative and thoughtful group of works. Have a look at the exhibition here.
The online exhibition of 13 members work, plus a group project and one of my new pieces of work, is available now until the end of April 2023.
If you would like to boost your creative growth through this group and the support I offer, membership is open to all makers. You can find out more about Membership here.
I was thinking yesterday, on a museum visit, of the power of personal stories in heritage and in art practice. I often use objects as my source material but the stories about real, named women are what has made Criminal Quilts so impactful. It’s been important to me all the way through this 12-year long project to emphasise that the women in the photographs were real, troubled women with multiple challenges in their lives, in a harsh system which tried to remove their individuality in prison. Their stories deserve to be told and remembered. My Criminal Quilts book has short case studies of 37 women and I have added extended biographies to my website since the book was written which you can find below.
Criminal Quilts is my first self-published book and it’s been a joy to share it across the world. It’s 80 pages full of prison photographs, the background to prison photography and details of the 500+ photos of women in the Stafford Prison archive. It also covers all the textiles I made up to 2018 and much more besides. It’s £16 available directly from me here.
I’ve been asked a thousand times how I got into this project and how I got from prison photographs to the quilts and other work I have made over the years. It’s almost impossible for me to define my long, slow working process, but I have been working on ways to share my research and development processes with others. My Maker Membership is designed to do this: helping other creatives who want to build in more research, meaning and connection into their practice. It’s an online group with resources and workbooks to help you define your practice and a friendly group to share and connect with. Members always tell me just how brilliant it is to find your people – others that understand what you are trying to do with your work and are properly interested in your ideas and want to support you to do your best work. I am really proud of this amazing space I’ve created and I want as many of you as possible to benefit from the support and development it offers. I have some free Find Out More events coming up soon but you can always find info here.
I truly believe that connection and community are vital to creativity. It’s hard to be making work on your own without conversations, feedback and inspiration from others. I created Maker Membership, my online community, during the pandemic to bring makers together to share, talk and be inspired. One of the problems of running an online membership is that it’s hard for potential members to know what it’s like without joining first. I’ve been working out ways to share a bit more about the membership so that I can welcome more new members to benefit from the support and community it offers. I’ve got two live events coming up and I’ll be sharing some preview content in the next few weeks too.
Instagram Live
I’m going to be talking live on Instagram on Monday 27th Feb at 7.30pm GMT and you can ask me any questions.
Free online group session
On Thursday 16th March I’m hosting a free trial session of our monthly group mentoring session. There are 8 spaces available in this one-hour session. You can book here. I’ll be doing another one later in the year too.
Would you prefer to read about it?
You can read about the membership here on my website. I know not everyone loves a Zoom call or can access Instagram live. I’ve got a post coming soon on how to find out more and take part in the membership if you prefer to read quietly, not come to Zoom calls. All are welcome!
Any questions?
You can join either of those sessions to ask me questions or if you prefer, leave a comment here and I’ll respond.
Ready to join?
That’s great. New members can join any time, your membership runs monthly from the day you join. It’s £25 each month and you get two months free if you join for a year once you know it’s right for you.
My review of the year through the brilliant people I’ve worked with.
I’ve been thinking about lots of different ideas or lenses to review of 2022. I don’t want to just write a list of things that I have done, or even to list the things I have made. Celebrating success is important but also I don’t want to be one of those people who just proclaims about how well they have done as that’s neither realistic or inspiring for anyone else. Nor do I want to be someone who focusses on the negatives, because however positive a spin I put on it, it’s just gloomy and I don’t like to dwell. I have made a list of failures and successes for my own private contemplation but I am not going to subject you to them!
In order to work out what angle to use to review my year, I turned to my coaching group for their thoughts. The simple fact that I chose to discuss it with other people gave me the answer – I should review the year through the lens of the brilliant people I have worked with!
Collaboration and working with other people has been a really vital part of my work for years, although it’s only fairly recently that I’ve noticed and celebrated that. The 2020 lockdown was of course a reminder to me of just how much I enjoy and get energy from creative work with others, alongside my own solitary studio practice. I was used to working with groups, spending time in other artists studios, giving talks, going to events, teaching and mentoring in person. I found the lack of conversation and connection around creative practice really hard. I was lucky in that I had ongoing and new projects that enabled me to work with other people remotely in 2020 (on WebinArt and on Textiles in Lockdown) which really made a huge difference to how I felt and what new work I could created. I pursued artist mentoring via Zoom which has become a major part of my work and something that I love, and eventually this also led to my Maker Membership where I get to work with lots of different people and support their creative practice over a long period. I also first created Gentle Goal Setting in the autumn of 2020 and ran it for the first time that winter. (It’s now revitalised into Find Your Focus which is starting this week and open for the whole of January). One of the most important goals I set for myself for 2021 was to connect and collaborate, and it has continued to be one of my guiding lights in how to develop my work.
Once I started gathering the people I’ve worked with this year, I realised it is potentially quite huge, so this is actually a snapshot of the connections and collaborations of the year rather than a detailed list, and I hope one that will be interesting for you to connect with too.
Podcast & Making Meaning Live Gathering
The most exciting bringing-together of people that I’ve done in a long time was Making Meaning Live which ran online in July and involved three days of presentations and conversations between the artists and creatives and an audience of about 100 people from around the world in each session. It was utterly exhausting and completely wonderful. The recordings of the sessions are still available for free and there are three podcast episodes with edited highlights and the full programme here.
This year I’ve produced the second series of Making Meaning Podcast which has been a joy to make and I’ve had the pleasure of conversations with Helen Hallows, Sharon Adams, Claire Wellesley-Smith, Alice Fox, Michaela McMillan, Mandeep Dhadialla and Gillian Lee Smith, as well as a solo episode, one about my Maker Membership and three highlight shows from Making Meaning Live. Making the podcast is fantastic, I really do love getting to talk to brilliant, creative people about what they do and why they do it. The admin is less enjoyable, but really it’s worth it to have these chats and to share them with so many – which brings me on to podcast listeners as another group of people I have connected with. Podcast audience numbers this year has exceeded all expectations. There have been over 100,000 downloads this year and some episodes have hit 8000 downloads. This is really incredible and I am so honoured that this small, low-budget podcast is having such a great impact. I will be chasing for donations to make another series very soon so I hope many of those listeners will be able to contribute to making more episodes this year as I have some great people lined up.
Groups
I’m writing this during one of my regular Tuesday co-working groups with three freelance friends, Emma King, Claire Wellesley-Smith and Wendy Ward (all of whom have appeared on my Making Meaning Podcast in one form or another). I think I started this in 2021 but whenever it was, it has worked out brilliantly. We meet on Zoom, have a chat and then quietly on our own projects for 30-40 minute bursts before breaking for more chat and repeat. Sometimes it’s more chat than work, but we all acknowledge how important it is to have space to talk about issues in freelancing – problematic employers, funding issues and even stuff in our personal lives which impact our ability to do the work we love. The group has been so valuable to me, both in terms of having work buddies to chat to and the accountability of co-working time so I get stuff done! I’ve made a shift this year so the sessions are focussing on writing, so here I am doing the thing, on the first day back to work. That’s the power of connecting and working with others.
I also have a great mini group of other artist mentors & coaches with Melody Vaughan and Sharon Adams. This was Melody’s innovation, because she recognised how challenging it can be to both support others and to run a business supporting others and that sharing with others who really understand both aspects is vital. We meet roughly quarterly and talk about all kinds of practical issues, new offers we are thinking about, bounce around problems and ideas and also explore some of the bigger picture stuff about supporting others and the things we would like to learn and develop.
Sharon is also a member of another group which started working together early this year. At the end of 2021 I applied for funding called Four Nations which aims to bring together partners from the four UK nations and others from overseas. I created a project of artists coming together to talk about artist support and also to be that mutual support group for each other. We meet online across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Sweden and The Netherlands and decided to call our project Artist Support Recipes, based on the idea of recipe books which bring ingredients and methods together. The group includes Sharon Adams, Gillian McFarland, Collette Rayner and Liz Nilsson. It’s turned into a supportive and fun collective of brilliant women with great ideas and innovations about how we can be supported as artists, how we can offer support to others and how we think organisations should go about supporting artists. We have also become highly expert in creating food & cooking-related metaphors for artist support! The funding for this project comes to an end soon but the learning and the connections will undoubtedly continue and we hope to offer our findings to organisations and others who want to do better in supporting artists. Working with this group is one of the many things that has helped to cement my decision to focus on supporting artists as my main freelance / consultancy work for this year and beyond.
I also have the pleasure of monthly chats with my European business friends: coach Elin Lööw, artist Gesche Santen and jeweller Daphne van ver Meulen about business and personal development. We met through a group programme in 2020 and have kept in touch since, and share a lot of the ups and downs of running a business and trying to fit in a life around it. These connections are so valuable and beneficial that I am even prepared to meet at 8am !
Working with artists
I made a decision in 2021 that I needed to be working with other artists on my various projects both to share the load and to have a creative collaboration to make it all more fun. I invited Mandeep Dhadialla to work with me on Woodgate Wellbeing last winter and then included her in my funding application for Community Spirit in the Spring / Summer. We had a great time collaborating on this project and then managed to follow it almost immediately with another one in the late summer. I supported Mandeep’s project with ArtReach in project producer role, as well as running one workshop. It was a really enjoyable collaboration and we are looking at other similar partnerships for this year. I’ve written about the project here. All of these projects have really made me think about who I work with an on what basis. Supporting artists with projects is something I really enjoy so I am formalising that work now – so if you need a producer to support an artist-led project, please do get in touch.
I’ve also had the pleasure of spending time in person with Kathryn Parsons this year, as well as seeing her new moths work on display. We had a mini retreat together in the summer to talk about art and landscape and making a living out of a research-led practice. We are planning another retreat before too long to continue to cook up ideas for another artists group (it seems that I cannot have enough!).
I’ve also been co-mentoring with Gillian McFarland, who I collaborate with a lot, and we took a really inspiring week’s retreat in the autumn, which you can read about here. Conversations with other artists who get what I do are worth their weight in gold (if you can weigh a conversation?!) and I am really lucky to have so many creative friends to talk to.
Other Peopleand connections
Alongside many brilliant artists, I’ve also had the pleasure of working with other professionals this year, firstly at the start of the year, Louise Jones-Williams, Director of Llantarnam Grange where I showed my Criminal Quilts exhibition for the last time in the Spring. Louise has been fantastically supportive of my work for a number of years and it is always a pleasure to spend time with her. We had a live-streamed conversation for the exhibition launch in February and then in March we recorded in person for my Making Meaning Podcast which you can listen to here.
In the Spring I also worked with Josslyn and Evelyn of Peace of Green on the Woodgate Wellbeing project and we’ve been talking about doing more together in the local countryside in the coming year, which will be great. I also got to have a long chat with Jemma Bagley and see the Loughborough Wellbeing Centre which is really inspiring and another place I hope to work with before too long. I also had some great, supportive and inspiring connections with volunteers, library and venue staff and volunteer co-ordinators during my Community Spirit project in the summer. It’s a shame that was only a short project as I made some really positive connections, but that’s often how things work in the community arts field. I’ve reflected on my volunteering experience here.
I also did a great bit of research and facilitation with ArtQuest earlier this Spring, working with a group to discuss ideas about improving the equity of open call artist opportunities. I loved doing this work and working with ArtQuest and the experts they brought into the discussions, and it’s really inspired me focus on more artist support consultancy work.
I didn’t end up working with Clore Leadership this year, as I wasn’t selected for their visual arts fellowship, one of the disappointments of the year for me, although I was pleased to get through to interview. Instead I decided to work with the fantastic coach Sarah Fox to help me work out the next steps I want take in my consultant / producer / freelancer work. I started Sarah’s Lasting Impact programme in September and it’s been fantastic. With her support, and the others in the group, I have started writing more about things that matter to me and sharing my thoughts more widely. I’ve written this autumn about textiles and having something to say (which seems to have created a project!) and the start of a series about artists and money which I will continue this year. I’ve also really clarified the kind of consultancy work I want to do in the future and started making steps towards making this happen.
And last, but not at all least, I have the pleasure all year round to work with the wonderful humans in my Maker Membership, some of whom appear in podcast episodes 17 and 24. We’ve had some great online sessions over the year as well as a small group of stitchers getting together in the spring to create work and have conversations about our feelings about the invasion of Ukraine. The group continues to be a wonderful community and such a great space to connect and share. I am so happy that I created this space and that it supports so many in their creative journey.
If you would like to spend some time reviewing your year and thinking about what you really want to do next, my Find Your Focus course is open now. The five week course begins with a holistic and mindful review of the year to help you plan what you want more of in the coming year. The course is open for the whole of January, with new lessons released each week. Find out more here.
Support and guidance with your creative practice with experienced artist & mentor Ruth Singer
My 1:1 mentoring sessions are back! I took a break in August and September to get a few other things finished and to have time to figure out what I wanted to do with my mentoring practice.
I’ve been mentoring since at least 2014 (according to my oldest testimonial!) but I am sure I was doing it more informally before then too. And I really do love it! It’s so energising to feel like you are making a difference to someone’s creative practice and to see the change and growth in your clients.
The two episodes of this series of Making Meaning Podcast are with two of my recent mentees and both talk about how useful and nurturing it is to have support in your creative practice. Mandeep’s podcast episode is here and there will be a new one out 29th September with guest Gillian Lee Smith reflecting on mentoring.
Here’s what Mandeep said on Instagram
“Today involved a moment of reflection within my practice – looking back, looking at my present stance, and looking ahead.
It’s been a few months now that I’ve been working with artist and mentor @ruthsingertextiles to help articulate my creative thoughts, and today’s session was as fruitful as always. I’ve come to think of each session together as a series of layers gently building towards the bigger picture.
The biggest and most important factor in choosing to work with Ruth is her holistic approach – having the capacity to engage, listen, provide space and show a genuine interest in bringing out the potential of my professional practice in line with my own holistic way of working, through inner and outer care. I’m felt understood in my visual language; the exchange of conversation never fails to inspire or encourage my wider ambitions.
This isn’t a push to gather more clients for Ruth nor is it a paid partnership; more an open sharing of thoughts, of how the idea of togetherness contributes to raising one another, of how what we can learn from one another organically weaves into our individual practices.
This linocut was a print I began last year which went miserably wrong, yet taught me a lot about technique and about myself. But most of all it invited conversation of all kinds to take place with printmakers and non-printmakers, influencing the developmental direction of my practice. It was an eye-opener, much like mentoring is – expansive; your hand held, with soft focussed guidance in finding your footing in your practice, and individual seat in the big art world.”
I’ve realised over the last couple of years of online mentoring that figuring out your creative practice isn’t something that can be achieved in one session! I now offer 3 or 6 session packages which give the mentee time and space to figure things out and move forward.
Find out more about mentoring here. If what you are looking for is community and a lighter touch of support then you might find my Maker Membership is the right space for you. I share loads of resources in the online space and we meet monthly on Zoom for group chats where you can ask for advice or feedback on your work. You can find out a bit of what it’s like by listening to Maker Membership episode of the podcast here.
What kind of things do you struggle with in your creative practice? What kind of support or help might take you forward into doing your best creative work? I’d love to hear from you, you can comment here or on my Instagram page.
I truly believe that connection and community are vital to creativity. It’s hard to be making work on your own without conversations, feedback and inspiration from others. I created Maker Membership, my online community, during the pandemic to bring makers together to share, talk and be inspired. This podcast episode is based around one of our Membership Live group sessions with three long-standing members Alison Foster, Cheryl Hewitt and Lucie Bea Dutton discussing their work, development and the support they receive from Maker Membership.
Maker Membership is an online community for makers who want to build more meaning, research and connection into their creative practice. It’s a wonderful creative space that I am so proud of creating during the pandemic to enable connection and creativity to flourish. We have members from across the world, involved in all kinds of different making practice. As well as monthly resources, reflections and blog posts from me, I host a monthly group mentoring session for anyone who wants to talk about and get feedback on their work in progress. I’ve re-created one of those sessions for this podcast so you can share the fascinating stories and thinking about creative practice from our members.
You can hear more from members about their creative practice in Making Meaning Live Gathering in July, an online social event to talk about craft and narratives as well as from other professional makers and creatives, all for free. This episode has been supported by Nicola Thomas through my crowdfunder. Thank you Nicola!
The Members in this podcast are
Alison Foster: I am drawn to the past and inspired by how people used to live, the unspoken, forgotten & hidden, as well as literature, science and natural history. I am fascinated by historical clothing for the intimate connections to the wearer and the memory and stories that garments may hold – what they tell us about the past and how this links to the present and future. I greatly enjoy working with old textiles and papers and I’m developing my practice to include historical stitching techniques, cameraless photography and printing. I have no professional training in textiles but I love learning and connecting with other creative people who inspire me.
Cheryl Hewitt: I am a Herefordshire based hand stitcher, storyteller and maker of curious things. I happened upon my practice after being a stay at home mum and returned to my studies at Hereford College of Arts, where I achieved a Masters degree in Contemporary Crafts. My practice involves repurposing and responding to materials that have had a previous life, making and stitching new, sometimes playful stories with them. I often make dolls and 3D objects that communicate themes of childhood memories, absence, loss and repair. I like the idea that my objects have been rediscovered after being lost or forgotten and I like them to have an ancient or old feel to them. Another part to my creative practice is that I work at About Face puppet theatre company where the actors have learning difficulties, I work with the actors and director, I maintain and I am also learning to make puppets of different sizes. I am also the co-founder of Laughing Betsy, creative workshops run by myself and another artist within our local community.
Lucie Bea Dutton: I am a handstitcher – I have focused on quilting in the past but am also producing flatter embroidered work at present as part of my large Cromwell Trillogy project. This long-term project was inspired by Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy; I worked on a 46 feet long stitched and quilted interpretation of Wolf Hall during lockdown, and am currently working on The Mirror and the Light, which is rather more fluid in format.
Let’s get together to talk about craft and narratives. Making Meaning Live is an online event full of creativity, connection, conversation and the stories behind what and why we make.
It’s for artists and makers, teachers, curators, and collectors, anyone with an interest in craft and storytelling. I’ll be bringing together makers to talk about and share their work in a sociable online space.
It’s not a standard online conference where you just sit and listen. It’s much more active. There will be different kinds of sessions including discussions, films and small groups to meet and talk to others. There will be things to do and take part in or you can just listen if you prefer. You can meet like-minded people and be part of fascinating conversations to spark your creativity and learn new things. And it’s free. Find out more here.
Maker Membership
My Maker Membership is now open for all makers wanting to explore their motivations and to build meaning and research into their practice and be part of a supportive creative community. We meet once a month and I share resources, tips and research to help you develop your own work. Find out more here.
I run Maker Membership through Podia which is an online school platform. If you are thinking of creating an online workshop website or similar online community through podia, please use my affiliate link below to sign up. Thank you ! https://www.podia.com/?via=ruth-singer
I’m an artist & maker exploring personal and collective narratives through textiles. I create for exhibitions, commissions and projects. I also write books, support other creatives through mentoring and consultancy / research work and I love generating my own projects, artist residencies and making things happen.
All of my work, across all of these different aspects is centred around making with meaning. I am fascinated by the hidden stories in all our lives and in historic objects and places. My work grows from research and contemplation and from collaborating with others.
This end of series episode of Making Meaning is just me. I wanted to reflect on the series, to share my thoughts and feelings about the amazing conversations I’ve had. I also wanted to add a bit more context about my own work and share more about myself and some of the projects I have worked on in the past, present and future. The themes that come up again and again in this series are about connection and collaboration, about the creative impulse and the value of our ideas, about research, about materials and making and about change, movement and belonging. I also introduce some ideas for the new series of Making Meaning, including a live event and longer, even more in-depth conversations.
And of course, there’s more of me asking for you to support the podcast with a contribution towards my crowdfunder to cover the costs of the new series and make it even better.
My Making Meaning podcast of conversations with creatives is coming to the end of 2021 series. I want to make the new 2022 series of Making Meaning even better. If you have enjoyed these episodes, please consider making a donation to my crowdfunder campaign before it closes on Monday 13th December at midday GMT.
So many of you have loved listening to Making Meaning over the last 6 months. It’s been a wonderful project for me too. I planned and recorded most of it while we were still in lockdown as a way of connecting with others and now being able to share these rich and inspiring conversations is a joy.
The podcast has really resonated with you, enabling you to learn more about your own making or creative work and to understand how artists think and work. It’s made connections across creative work and within and outside of my own textiles discipline. I’ve been able to share stories from museum work and other kinds of creative practice as well as craft and they are all so relevant and inspiring to hear.
I’ve been doing this out of my own pocket for the last year but really need to make it financially viable for 2022. I have to pay hosting fees, editing and marketing costs and then there’s my own time.. and I would love to be able to pay my guests something too as they have so generously given their time. There are a range of rewards including episode and whole series sponsorship.
My Maker Membership is now open for all makers wanting to explore their motivations and to build meaning and research into their practice and be part of a supportive creative community. We meet once a month and I share resources, tips and research to help you develop your own work. Find out more here.
In my Maker Membership group, sketchbooks come up a lot. Some love them, some are terrified by them and some are just not sure. I thought I would write about my own use of sketchbooks or project books as I prefer to call them. Using books to collect ideas, information, images, notes and samples is something I’ve come to later in my practice but I am so grateful for it now. I love making books about the work I am developing and find them enjoyable and inspiring to make and endlessly useful and fascinating to revisit.
I don’t like the term sketchbooks as it implies drawing and like many textile makers, drawing is not part of my process. I sometimes do annotated simple drawings but I don’t sketch. I struggled through my A-Level art aged 18 with some additional drawing tuition and have done very little representational drawing since. It’s just not a process I enjoy. I love mark making and creating patterns with pens, pencils and crayons and created a book of patchwork-inspired designs for colouring a few years back.
My ‘sketchbooks’ are usually created for a specific project. The first one I properly worked on was for a commission called Metamorphosis . The people who commissioned the work were keen to show sketchbooks as well so it was a good exercise for me in creating something I was happy to share.
I didn’t fill the small sketchbook for this project so it became a more general studio book instead. Studio books are where I keep samples, ideas, notes, fragments and other inspiring things that are otherwise loose in my head or in my studio. I go through phases of keeping these but I never regret it.
Since that project / studio book, I have created many others. I usually have a very general studio book on the go which has measurements, calculations, lists, sums, designs and working notes for whatever I am working on at the time.
What I have kept up is the project books. For the Leicester University genetics residency in 2017, I used an A3 book which gave me space for lots of drawing, notes, images and mind maps.
For the first part of Criminal Quilts, I had notes and sketches and ideas in a lot of different notebooks and studio books and really regretting not keeping it all in one place. When I started the 2017-18 Criminal Quilts residency, I knew I needed to keep a project book which I would share as part of the project. It has been to many workshops, talks, events and open days. Although I started making it as a public resource, it is also my working sketchbook or planning book. I have notes of pieces that I have since made or since abandoned, and things that are parked for the future. It has a lot of notes, lists, scribbles, mind-maps and drawings as well as the collected materials of inspiration. It helped me to have all this in one place while I was doing the residency as so little of the project happened in my studio. I was able to carry it all around with me. Having said that, the huge heavy hardback book I chose, whilst being perfect for display, was a pain to carry around on the train / on foot! I used a wheelie suitcase a lot for that project as my sketchbook was too big for a rucksack.
For the Libraries Live commission in 2019 I made a quilted book and a series of activity kits for library visitors. Throughout the residency I kept a decorative sketchbook intended as a record of my workshops and to inspire workshop participants. I decided to include the sketchbook as part of my commission as I felt it belonged with the other elements. As this was a commission, it was very different to my own work and has quite an unique identity. These photos are professional shots taken for the project and a nice record of the work for me to look back on.
My current studio books and project books are quite experimental including collage and print work and some gathering of inspirational materials. Before I packed away my studio to move over the summer I started working on a book of things that were lying around but worked well together. Postcards, samples, fragments, old paper and cloth, images and notes. This is not about a specific project but a process for me of making use and sense of the inspirational things I have around which might otherwise be on the walls or getting in the way in my studio. I refer back to this a lot – I simply enjoy looking at it and letting my ideas flow.
I have also got one which is purely for experimental collage and print work which I have just re-found after moving.
For my textile projects I have two ongoing project books, one about quilts which I started when I did my Fragments exhibition in 2017 and another which I don’t have a name for which is about my long-term research about damage and decay.
Writing this has made me think more about sharing some of my sketchbooks in a digital form which may or may not happen, but either way it has made me excited about getting back to my project books and adding more to them. Do you use sketchbooks or research books to gather your thoughts and inspiration? I’d love to hear about them.
There’s more about creating and using project books within my Maker Membership site. Membership is open now for anyone who makes and wants to build more depth and meaning to their craft practice, connect with a like-minded community and work with me. It costs £25 a month and you can join for as long as you need to. Find out more here or use the button below to join.
Maker Membership with Ruth Singer, for textile makers who want to be inspired, creative, imaginative and make work with meaning.
When I was starting out as a textile maker, I really struggled with the reality of making a consistent body of work. I made all sorts of things in all kinds of designs, textures, patterns, colours and materials. I just wanted to make what I wanted to make. I don’t have a textile degree or any formal education as an artist / maker and really hadn’t had to create a consistent style for myself. As things progressed I became more and more aware of this being a problem and that it was holding me back from making an impact with my work. Fabric manipulation became my trademark and that helped me refine my style quite a lot. I used one technique on each piece of work and mostly used the same fabric throughout which really simplified and toned down all my colourful and textural excesses. I also fixed on making pieces on frames / panels which again slowed down my need to make clothes, bags, cushions and ALL THE THINGS.
Even while making this work I had other creative outlets including designing for books and magazines, so I did get to use some of the extra ideas without confusing my actual exhibition work too much. I never really got the hang of a consistent colour palette though, using the excuse that I worked with recycled fabrics and had to use what I could get rather than buying within a colour range. It was a slow development from this kind of work to what I do now but there were two projects which really forced me (in a good way) to change the style of my work for good.
Monumental Folly frame, detail
Monumental Folly circular frame, detail
These pieces, Monumental Folly, were pivotal in changing the way I worked. I chose to work with fabric manipulation techniques but add in a few other materials and processes and work with a very subtle palette. Above all though, these pieces had a narrative and meaning for me and that was what really worked. It then took me years to show these to anyone and exhibit them as I struggled to know if they were good. I was lucky to get some amazing feedback from the brilliant Emma Daker (Craftspace) who encouraged me to show them and later awarded me a prize for this work. That really helped me press on with the idea of making narrative work with limited colour palettes and with a strong underlying thread of history, building on my previous career in museums.
Around the same time I also started on the first Criminal Quilts pieces, directly as a result of making the Monumental Folly pieces. It was a huge creative challenge to create work from a criminal justice building rather than purely textile inspiration but it was a steep learning curve that has set up my career for the last 10+ years and helped me find exactly the right niche in textile art where I belong.
This process of creative challenge, revision, limitation and experimentation has helped me find my unique creative voice and allowed me to be consistent and considered in my ongoing work. I diverge and do slightly different things, bring in new techniques and sometimes colour palettes, but I feel now that I have a recognisable style and theme which brings all my work together.
Maker Membership is my online programme which I hope will take makers (and aspiring makers) towards finding this special place themselves. Creating work which is meaningful, consistent and imaginative.
What is Maker Membership?
It’s about tapping into your own interests, researching, thinking, considering, editing, testing and rejecting lots of ideas until the right one filters out. My approach to teaching in Maker Membership is about growing your confidence in exploring and refining your ideas. It’s about seeding those ideas with research prompts and exercises in exploration and investigation and then refining your thoughts to filter out all the excess to get to the thing that’s important.
This programme is not about learning to make what I make, it’s about learning to think like I do and applying textile skills that make sense with the meaning of your work.
What will it be like?
Each month I will create resources (audio, video, written – it will vary) around a theme which fits into a quarterly over-arching topic. Members can then develop their own ideas, sketchbooks (if they want), samples and research in a way that works for them. There’s no testing, no right or wrong and no fixed outcome that you have to produce. Everything is digital so you can join from anywhere in the world. There will be a monthly live ‘thing’, probably on Zoom but I will tweak that as we get going and adapt to what suits the members best. You can fit it in around your commitments and make it part of your daily /regular studio practice. The membership runs through the established teaching platform Podia and you will get emails with all the content. You can find out more here.
Are you ready to learn and grow with me?
Membership is £25 per month and you can stay as long as you need.
Ruth Singer 