Tag Archives: craft

Behind the Hedgerow

Posted in Blossom & Thorn, Inspiration, research, Textiles on display by

During National Hedgerow Week I am sharing more about my Blossom & Thorn project creating artwork about hedges along the National Forest Way. Today I’m sharing a bit of behind the scenes about my developing ideas for the artwork I will be creating over the next couple of months to share at Timber Festival.

This project concept really started a year or so ago while walking locally across fields and past hedges. I’ve got a longer-term project about local landscape and history within walking distance of my house and hedges have formed part of this ongoing research. So when I saw the National Forest Arts Grants opportunity it made sense to come up with a project proposal involving landscape history and trees.

My proposal was to work with volunteers to walk in areas of the National Forest and identify historic landscape features like boundaries, abandoned farms and old woodlands, as well as old hedges, and from this create an artwork for Timber Festival.

In January I visited the Timber Festival site to consider how I might present some work within the trees and an old hedgerow caught my eye and suddenly clarified the project. I would make work about hedges in the National Forest and present it, if possible, in this old hedgerow.

My working drawing of the piece in situ is below, centre. The other images are pages from my project book as I work through various ideas of what I could make and what I would ask volunteer hedge spotters to investigate.

So now there are hedge spotters around the National Forest area walking parts of the National Forest Way and sending me their findings and hedge stories which I will incorporate into the artwork. There’s still time to take part, you can find out all the information here. And if you are already doing this, please don’t forget to send in your hedge discoveries by 31st May.

I’m sharing much more of my development of this project with my Maker Membership group. My Maker Membership is an online group for makers who want to build more meaning and research into their practice and want to learn from me and share with others. I also set a theme and creative brief for any members who want to explore new research and ideas along with. At the moment the theme is Woodlands to tie in with my Blossom & Thorn project. I’ve shared some recent experiments with quilts in woodlands and the background and development of this project around hedges. Membership is open for anyone who makes and wants to think about their practice, reflect and learn. There’s more information below.

If you are looking for a creative community with ongoing support and resources to challenge your thinking and take your creative practice further, have a look at my Maker Membership. It’s a monthly rolling membership that you can join any time. I create workbooks, blog posts and videos about all kinds of things including research, creative development and reflection. There’s also a lively community who share their work and their thoughts via the members chat and we meet monthly on Zoom for a group mentoring session which is always really inspiring and encouraging. It’s £25 per month to join with no minimum term. Find out more here.

Hedge walks

Posted in Blossom & Thorn, Community, History, research by

Like the hedges, my Blossom & Thorn project is in bloom now! Last weekend I led a guided walk along a section of the National Forest Way in Leicestershire. 14 of us (and one dog) explored several stretches of hedges in really varied condition. Some were closely clipped and others gone semi-wild, while others were entirely feral. Most of them had signs of old laying within them and we found a good variety of species including some unexpected like gooseberry!

The participants told me they had a lovely time, chatting with each other about their own nature enthusiasms and learning about hedges, fields, landscape history, trees and plants. It was a really fun experience for me to take others on my hedge walks as I do most of my hedge-spotting research walks by myself.

I’ve been exploring different parts of the National Forest Way for this project and have been to both places I know well and completely new routes. Last week I visited the Rosliston Forestry Centre, in the middle of the National Forest. The National Forest Way, the focus of this project, snakes around the site and into local fields and villages. I managed to visit on a beautiful sunny day and enjoyed a 3 mile walk with only a little bit of deep mud. I found my first old hedge immediately upon leaving the visitor centre (top left image below) and followed a line out into the village of Rosliston. This turned into a flourishing young hawthorn hedge around the churchyard with the remnant of a hedge opposite, one forming a green lane but now a stray hedge on an access road (top centre image).

I found some amazing old hedge trees turning into full sized ash trees (above left) and some fragments of hawthorn (centre) as well as some beautiful sheep and lovely spring hedge bottom plants like hedge mustard / garlic and bluebells.

I’ll be sharing more of my hedge discoveries, my sketchbook and plans for the artwork in the coming week for National Hedgerow Week.

In the meantime, please volunteer to share your hedge stories if you are near to the National Forest Way and can visit in the next few weeks before the end of May. Find out more here about taking part in this project. My project is supported by a National Forest Arts Grant.

Creative Growth online exhibition

Posted in artist support, Community, creative business, Exhibitions, Maker Membership, Work With Me by

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.

The Power of Personal Stories

Posted in Criminal Quilts, Inspiration, Maker Membership, My work by

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.

Agnes Herrity

Fanny & Ada Riddle

Harriet George

Caroline Pulley

Bridget Warrilow

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.

Learn new textile techniques with me

Posted in Art Textiles, creativity, Inspiration, My work, techniques, Textile History by

Textile Study Space is my online school for all things stitch and fabric. It’s a subscription site for just £5 with monthly posts and a growing archive of things like this.

I’ve been slowly building my Textile Study Space over the last year with new content about textiles, inspiration, my work and some techniques and ideas for how to use stitch and cloth.

In the last few months I’ve added a mini video workshop on stitch meditations like these here.

There’s also technique posts about negative space embroidery and about this glorious antique stitched card.

There’s a video lesson on how to make these little irregular patchwork windows (left) and a study of an antique patchwork (below).

There’s a tour of my fabric stash which is quite extensive!

And lots of background posts about my work including my use of digital print and studies of antique textiles.

And it’s only £5 monthly subscription for all of these archive posts and something new every month. Find out more and join Textile Study Space here.

Embellished sewing tools

Posted in My work by

I’ve recently completed a small series of works for sale with the lovely Beyond Measure shop. I don’t make a lot of things for retail so these are pretty special.

The darning cards are £36.50 and you can find them here. This scissors start at £49 and you can find them here. Beyond Measure also stock the very last of my Patchwork Colouring Books.

The darned darning cards and embellished scissors ideas both started life in this exhibition piece I made
in 2018.

I inherited my grandmother’s sewing box over 40 years after she died. I never knew
her, yet we share a thread of textile inheritance.
I spent several years pondering this box of embroidery threads, unfinished projects, tools
and bits and pieces before I worked out what I wanted to make with them. I started by
unravelling, tidying and sorting her threads and tools and then once I could see everything
clearly, I decided to make small embellished pieces. I only used threads that were already
started, short lengths and scraps and only used the tools and other things found in the
same box.

Wrapping and embellishing scissors and functional things makes them even more
precious and turns them into miniature works of art which resonate with stories and past
lives. I collect old darning cards with wonderful old graphic design and scissors which have
been used over decades and love to select threads and stitches which give new life to
things which have languished in sewing boxes for years.

I’ve made a few commissions using these techniques too, details below and worked some boxes full of these kind of sewing tool treasures (I have one or two of these left, please get in touch if you would like to see images).

photo of red silk lined box of victorian sewing tools with stitching and embellishment by Ruth Singer.

My new Find Your Focus course starts in January. It covers core values, a realistic review of your year, looking at what matters most and then working on how to build in more of the good stuff and less of the stuff that’s not taking you forwards. The course is delivered through 5 video lessons starting on 3rd January, fresh and ready for the new year.

Find Your Focus

Posted in artist support, creative business, mentoring, Work With Me by

Neutral textile background with the words Find Your Focus Online Course with Ruth Singer 3-31 January 2023

The world is pretty distracting at the moment isn’t it? Creative practice is pretty distracting too. Confusing as well. It’s all too common to find ourselves wading through too many ideas and not knowing which to concentrate on, or struggling to know what ideas are worth pursuing. Running a business and keeping moving forwards with creative practice is even more complicated. There are so many potential projects, ideas, collaborators, ways of marketing, types of selling, different products and oooh that new shiny thing over there that is tempting us away from the stuff we’ve already started.

Do you struggle to find the right focus for your creative energy? Keep trying different things in the hope that this is the ‘right’ one? Want to do all the things and not concentrate on just one at a time? I really do understand. My early years in creative practice were pretty messy. I wanted to do everything even though I didn’t remotely have the time. I wanted to experiment and try new things but I also wanted, desperately, to be proficient and skilled and really expert in one thing. It’s all a bit much.

What I’ve learned in the 17 years I’ve been doing this is that focus is absolutely vital in making a success of a creative practice or business. You can’t do everything. And the thing(s) you focus on have to be the things that are most important to you, not what someone else told you should do.

That’s really what Find Your Focus is all about, honing in on the things that really matter, the stuff you love and want to put all your energy into, not what distracts you and that you think you ought to be doing instead.

Work at your own pace with this online course

I’ve created Find Your Focus from my Gentle Goal Setting course, workbook and live workshops over the last couple of years. After working with lots of people and doing the gentle goal setting process myself three times, I have refined and expanded it into a wider course looking at identifying your focus points or guiding lights for the year to come.

Over five weeks of online video courses, plus two workbooks, we will look at your creative core values, review the year in a realistic and gentle way, dig into what matters to you most, why you do what you do and how to single out those areas of focus that will be taking you forwards into the new year.

You’ll work at your own pace through the video lessons and workbooks but with accountability and reminders through the weekly course emails. There are two workbooks to download and keep too which you can refer back to whenever you start to lose your way. They include printable sheets of your key focus points and help you break down each focus into achievable goals and action steps.

I honestly find this process so valuable and have loved sharing it with many of you over the last few years. I hope this version of Gentle Goal Setting – now Find Your Focus will help many more in being gentle with ourselves and our plans while also achieving the things that really matter.

Find Your Focus starts on 3rd January with a pre-recorded video lesson and four more each week until 31st January. You can join any time.

If you find you want more support there will be a discount code for subscribers of the course to book 3 or 6 sessions of 1:1 mentoring with me.

Artist Mentoring

If you are feeling a bit at sea with your creative practice, I’m here to help. I’ve created my mentoring programmes after years of working with and supporting artists and really understanding the challenges of creative life. I’m on your side to help you figure out the meanings and the reasons behind your creative practice and how to move forwards. Find out more here.

Making Community Spirit

Posted in Collaborations, Community, Creative Producer by

Behind the scenes on my current community project

Creating great projects is all about the preparation and behind the scenes work. As my Community Spirit project is coming to an end, I’m reflecting on all the work and unseen effort, creativity and chaos that goes on to make things like this look seamless. I started working on the funding application last summer when my house move got delayed again and I suddenly had 2 weeks with not much in the diary. But the idea of the project was even longer ago than that. While I was deep in the middle of volunteering for the foodbank in 2020 I went for a walk in the park (because I couldn’t go any further) and was thinking about just how vital and impactful volunteering was proving to be. And I wanted something to show for it. Something that others could see and that would really shine a light on the amazing work done by volunteers. It took 12 months more before I turned it into a funding application and then it took three attempts to get the funding, taking me through to the very end of 2021. It was hard to write the application and even harder to revise and change it and keep the energy and enthusiasm needed to get it finally funded.

Luckily, one of the changes I made to the project in the re-submitting stage was to bring in an associate artist. I realised that I need to collaborate, to work with others and have a team to work with. I invited Mandeep Dhadialla to work with me on this because of her experience in running community workshops. In fact originally I thought she would be doing all of the workshops although it really didn’t work out like that!

Our first joint job was to create the concept for the artwork. I love coming up with different ideas for making projects where different people can collaborate and work towards a finished piece. The original application says that we’d make a quilt but I knew from the start that I actually wanted to do something different. I love a community quilt project but there are a lot of them around and I always want to take the least obvious route in a creative project.

Project colour palette

The other element in this project was that I was working with Mandeep not just by myself and I soon realised that the quilt idea wouldn’t work with Mandeep’s print on paper specialism. So I wanted to find a different way of working that would allow paper and textile to be used and I realised that it would also be great if the pieces made could be returned to the participants rather than produce one large piece which would then need a home.

One of the inspirations was Alinah Azadeh’s Medals for Everyday Courage, shared by Craftspace. I loved the idea of medals or tokens to celebrate the work volunteers had done. But I didn’t want to copy this idea for my own project, I needed my own concept. We bounced around a lot of ideas and eventually rosettes came out top. It worked perfectly – could be made in textile or paper, there’s space for words and images and they would make great mementoes of volunteering for makers to give as gifts or to keep for themselves.

We both worked on creative concepts that would be easy to make in workshops and at home with materials kits and put together all the stuff required and made prototypes.

I wrote instructions and printed booklets with photos to go with make-at-home kits while Mandeep prepared printed and hand drawn papers for the kits and workshops. And then we got started. Over 50 rosettes were made and contributed to the project over the summer and we then had to work out how to bring them together and display them in a way which allowed us to move it around easily and return the rosettes to their makers after the tour ended.

After a lot of research and experimenting, I decided to make a simple quilt for the pieces to attach to and went on the hunt for a suitable display stand which would work. I had a lovely time researching quilt displays but in the end opted for coat rack / open wardrobe style stand. The one I picked was designed to move easily and folds up for transport. It has a large box attached at the bottom which is not ideal in some ways but does mean I can store the packaging for the display all in the base and leave it at the venue.

So then I made the quilt to go on the stand, for the rosettes to attach to. That was a lot harder than I hoped, as I was running out of time and had to short cut to make a simpler version. I had intended to make a complex patterned patchwork but eventually realised that it would be impossible in the time I had left and also would be covered in rosettes so wouldn’t show anyway! So that rather lovely but wonky piece of patchwork is going to become my own artwork about volunteering – smaller scale and more visible as a standalone piece. Mandeep and I spent a day securing rosettes with extra stitching, backing, glue and other scaffolding to make sure they stood up to being moved and handled regularly.

Professional studio shot

One final inspection by my cat and it was ready to go on tour.

The showcase, along with the film and a booklet of my research is now on show in Loughborough at John Storer House. It’s there until 14th October and then has a couple of other venues in the county before it’s taken apart and the rosettes are returned to volunteers. You can also watch the film and download the booklet here. This is the last of a flurry of community projects I’ve been working on in 2021-22 but there will be more, in time. If you work for an organisation that would benefit from an artist-led project, please get in touch.

Creative Producer

Projects around making things happen and bringing together people, places and stories

I love working with people to explore places and stories. I create and deliver projects inspired by my three sources of joy: textiles, artists and heritage. I add in research, partnerships and funding to produce experiences around People, Places and Stories. 

The experiences I create might be for artists, for textile-lovers, around heritage and stories, by, with and for communities.

Find out more about my Creative Producer work here.

Making Meaning Podcast Episode 26 with Gillian Lee Smith

Posted in career, creative business, podcast by

In this final conversation of the series, I am talking to Gillian Lee Smith, a Scottish painter based in Northumberland. Gillian and I first met as members of a designer-makers group in the English midlands but we reconnected over Zoom during the pandemic and have had some wonderful conversations about our practices, our mentoring work and our creative ideas. In this conversation we focus on mentoring and talk about how both supporting others and being supported ourselves helps our practice. We talk about the zigzag journey of creative practice and how reflection and talking things through with others really helps to clarify things, to open new doors and to inspire. 

Gillian Lee Smith is a painter living in Northumberland. Her ongoing work is inspired by maritime history – fishing communities, the stories of the ocean and the man made structures of harbours that mark the boundary and often create sheltering spaces from the storms.

Gillian is embarking on a new body of work called The Lost and The Left Behind which will explore themes of the ongoing resonance of history, loss and memory. The process of painting (creating, burying and excavating) allows an image to reveal itself over time and can connect to a particular story, memory or experience in surprising ways. Gillian is exploring ways of taking this approach into other media such as printmaking and mixed media for her new work. 

A practicing artist for over 15 years, Gillian teaches in person workshops and creates online courses such as her signature programme Building a Body of Work as well as working closely with other artists through mentoring. Exhibiting locally and nationally, Gillian recently won a highly commended award with her portrait Through dust and darkness (The Miner) at Woodhorn Mining Museum. 

Play here

Website
Instagram
Online courses

Other links

Solo exhibition November 2022 to February 2023 at Newbiggin Maritime Museum

Artist Mentoring

If you are feeling a bit at sea with your creative practice, I’m here to help. I’ve created my mentoring programmes after years of working with and supporting artists and really understanding the challenges of creative life. I’m on your side to help you figure out the meanings and the reasons behind your creative practice and how to move forwards. 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.

Making Meaning Podcast Episode 25 with Mandeep Dhadialla

Posted in career, creative business, podcast by

Mandeep is a printmaker and workshop leader who works under the brand The Laughing Cactus Print Studio. She’s also local to me and we’ve been working together a lot over the last year or so on community projects and sharing thoughts on our respective creative practices. In this conversation we talk about the themes Mandeep is currently exploring around stillness and displacement, about belonging and moving between two countries. We talk about community practice and the impact it has on our work and the benefits of the collaborative work we are currently involved in. 

Mandeep Dhadialla is an artist printmaker living and working in Leicester. Her work revolves around linocut printmaking, including on textiles, and making handprinted and hand-bound books. Spending her formative years as a child in Kenya and migrating to England in her early teens influences her practice. She explores concepts of home, place, safety and comfort within her printmaking practice, experimenting with combined monoprint, linocut and collagraph print techniques – more recently on the idea of Stillness in Displacement, of how landscape provides the constant anchoring between inner emotional displacement and outer physical displacement, a parallel in narrative between migration, the pandemic and landscape.

Mandeep has sixteen years’ experience of teaching with museums and arts organisations. Her own printmaking practice continued to develop exhibiting widely in shows including Society of Women Artists. She achieved the Runner Up award at Sock Gallery and Highly Commended in their recent Summer exhibition. She received an Honourable Mention Award with Circle Foundation for the Arts, Kenya, and achieved Commended in Teesside Print Prize 20. She is a member of Leicester Society of Artists. 

Play here

Mandeep’s Website
Mandeep’s shop

Other links

Mandeep runs a print club – members receive four original prints a year through the post. 

You can sign up to her mailing list 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.