Claire Benn

I am committed to cloth – having a label to describe what I do doesn’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things. My personal focus as a practising artist is producing art cloth and wall hangings through wet processes and stitch.

I use multiple wet processes to achieve cloth with colour, imagery, texture and depth and if the piece calls for it, I follow up with stitch.

Why do I do what I do? Because I want to, love to, choose to. When I’m engaged in process it truly enables me to find ‘the space within’.

Before ‘committing to cloth’, I spent 15 years as a trainer and coach in the field of communication and personal development. This experience has helped me enormously in my textile work as practising what I used to preach enables me to self-coach and study work and work-in-progress in a reasonably objective way - feedback is a powerful learning tool, with critical feedback being the most valuable in terms of personal development and growth.

My training as a coach also explains why I am a firm believer that ‘what you state is what you make’. In other words, having a positive outlook contributes enormously to achieving a positive outcome. Admittedly this can at times be hard work but making a conscious effort to take responsibility, learn from mistakes and keep moving forward seems to be a better option that wringing my hands, living in the past and saying ‘if only’!

Quite simply, working with textiles is helping me live the life I want to live - a creative one.

Below you’ll find some images of my work – past and present – hope you enjoy them.

How I like to work…

I generally take two approaches to my work and find both rewarding. The no-plan, get stuck-in, process-driven, experimental approach helps me to take risks, venture into the unknown and discover new things. So, at times I’ll immerse myself exclusively in a single process and just keep hammering away at it from every conceivable angle until I find out just what it can do.

Running in tandem with the ‘get stuck in, no preconceived plan’ work is a more considered approach that generally begins with internally conceived, conceptual themes. For example, I’ve now completed five pieces based on the theme ‘It’s all Academic’, triggered by a printing mistake using old-fashioned wooden alphabet blocks and further developed by reading my dyslexic step-sons school reports. It just strikes me that so often, individuals are moulded into what the system/society wants, as opposed to being encouraged to work to their innate strengths and abilities. I’ll stop now before I get into a rant!

Sometimes both approaches morph and converge as whatever the driver might be behind the work, I feel it’s vitally important to take time out at every stage to look at what’s happening, ask it questions, make conversation and hear what the work has to say. Periods of reflection and contemplation are important for the compositional process. I’ll spend time writing about my work, the thoughts and feelings I have around it and developing personal imagery appropriate to where I’m trying to get to with the cloth.

I don’t keep sketch-books as such (although it depends on how you define the word ‘sketchbook’) but I do always have a personal scribble book on the go to write in, record my thoughts and ideas, create imagery and so forth. These are dated and kept as one thing I’ve learned is that what doesn’t work for one piece may well be perfect for another. I also keep files of imagery (roughly labelled) to help me search things out when I might need them. Ideas come when they will and recording them is important as even though I may not realise them immediately, having a record means I can re-access them at any time.

Ultimately I subscribe to the philosophies of the Dao te Ching...

“The more you use it, the more it produces” (Verse 5)
“It is always present within you. You can use it any way you want” (Verse 6)
“Do your work and then step back. The only path to serenity” (Verse 9)

I also identify with the words of John Holt, an influential educator; “we learn by doing. There is no other way”. Ultimately, it’s about process. When I’m in process I find peace, contentment, exhilaration, ecstasy, frustration, anger, boredom, fear, tears, laughter, curiosity, stimulation, contemplation, thoughts, feelings, ideas. When I’m in process I am alive. I am in the place within.

Leslie Morgan

I have always thought of myself as an embroiderer who makes quilts. Whilst I’ve embraced influences and techniques outside of quilt making traditions, the wonderful heritage of traditional techniques still influences my work.

More recently I have moved away from surface stitch and stitch effects to the simplicity and complexity of free-pieced construction. My hand dyed and printed cloth has become more complex by adding layers of texture and imagery and this layering process is usually my first endeavour when starting a new series or furthering a current one.

We are all creative. Talent lies within all of us. I don’t believe that the ability to make brilliant, expressive, powerful, satisfying pieces is limited those who seem gifted. Ability and possibility lies with those who are committed to the furtherance of their skills and adamant about developing them with tireless curiosity. I believe that to learn how to make brilliant quilts, you have to make quilts. To learn about colour, you have to work with it whether that’s in a bucket or tray, by pipette, squeeze bottle, screen or any other way you can think of! I would encourage you just to get stuck in – “we learn by doing – there is no other way”.

Below you’ll find some images of my work – past and present – hope you enjoy them.

How I like to work…

Colour is my central inspiration, my greatest curiosity and influential in all my processes. It’s the first step I take to achieve personal expression. My favourite design tool for many years has been collage – the use of magazine pages to develop compositional ideas for colour, imagery and texture. I also use my own painted and printed papers to mimic the personal feel my hand-dyed and printed fabrics will give me. I photograph my cloth to generate collage paper in order to explore the possibilities of that particular cloth, or a combination of fabrics. The results of these explorations become a map or visual guide suggesting ways of working with the cloth, but they’re not a rigid pattern that I feel obliged to follow.

Some of my quilts develop from working spontaneously and directly with fabrics, exploiting random happenings in the course of painting and printing or as the result of playful constructions with the cloth. I usually have more than one theme on the go, which frequently intermingle.

The third starting point of my design process begins with dyes and paints, making my own personal cloth and then responding to it. I don’t work exclusively with these but combine them with commercial fabrics that I like to over-dye or over-print to express different moods. Every now and then I create the perfect piece of cloth that’s pushy and frightening in its perfection - the piece I cannot cut up! When this happens the challenge is to face the fear, take the risk and release the piece from its cage and set it free! Whilst it’s safer to use imperfect, incomplete fabrics to make an expressive whole, what is life without challenge?