August, exciting already and not yet half way through the month

Over the coming weeks and months I will have more regular posts to publish and some exciting things to share with you. My work for Textile Study Group’s DIS/rupt has been returned at the end of the tour. The work as I have said was challenging but worth while on many levels not the least being the whole exhibition proved that textiles can address difficult contemporary issues.

The weather this summer has been spectacular and what a joy to walk in the countryside and enjoy fields of ripening barley and wheat as far as the eye can see. It has led me to think about next steps and those fields have been part of my thinking. Not far from here, well about 20 miles, there is a beautiful, ancient oak wood which we discovered for the first time in May when the ground was carpeted with bluebells. It is hard to  imagine anyone walking round the wood and not feeling uplifted.

It’s easy to say that the photo is not doing this wood justice, but you will need to believe me.

However, to get to this wood you walk through a farmyard and along a path between two fields, and ideas that had been formulating in my mind became a little clearer. It was that area of land at the edge of a field, the edgelands, that set me thinking. There is something about the cultivated being right up beside the uncultivated, the two separated by a narrow strip of wildness. Going back in high summer the bluebells were gone but the fields were beautiful.

So, we’ll see what happens but my plan is to share my development through this blog. Enjoy and please let me know what you think