Do Ho Suh: Walk the House at Tate Modern
In this beautiful, thought-provoking exhibition, Korean artist Do Ho Suh explores the concept of home, based on dwellings he has lived in in three cities – Seoul, New York, and London. By physically recreating aspects of these houses and apartments through rubbing and stitching, Suh explores the relationship between architecture, the body, and memory. What […]
Sukumo indigo vat
If you’ve followed me for a while you’ll know that I used to do a lot of indigo dyeing before the basketry bug took hold. I’ve worked with synthetic and natural vats and also grew Japanese indigo in my garden. I used freshly picked leaves to create beautiful turquoise on silk, and also fermented the […]
Looping experiments
Now that my Morley College teaching year is finished, the July issue of the Basketmakers’ Association Journal has gone to press, and the weather has cooled down a bit, I have more time to play. One thing that I really enjoyed during the pandemic lockdown was having the time to try things out and experiment, […]
Completing our tukutuku
About a year ago I attended a workshop to make a tukutuku – a latticework panel used to decorate a Māori meeting house. You can read the blog post about it here: unfortunately, we ran out of time to complete it. Happily, the tutors Jim and Cathy Schuster returned to the UK a couple of […]
Saltaire Arts Trail 2025
I’m very excited to be taking part in the Saltaire Arts Trail over the late May bank holiday weekend on 24-26 May. Saltaire, a village near Bradford in West Yorkshire, is named after Sir Titus Salt. In the mid-1800s he built a textile mill here on the River Aire, along with a village to house […]
Scaling up with willow sculpture
Regular followers know that I usually work on a small scale – most pieces I make can be held comfortably in the palm of one hand. But sometimes it’s good to push out of my comfort zone. So I signed up for a course in sculptural willow basketry at the Basketmakers’ Association (BA) Spring School […]
Satellites by Dan Coopey at Corvi-Mora
Dan Coopey is a British artist living and working in Minas Gerais, Brazil. To be honest I’d not heard of him until a friend sent me a link to one of his Instagram posts about this exhibition. The Corvi-Mora is fairly local to me but again, I’d never visited. So a double first! Coopey studied […]
Coiled scrunchie
Teaching is never a one-way process. I often learn things from my students – as they do from each other. It’s one of the most rewarding parts of the job. On one of my coiling courses last year we were exploring how the technique can be used to create alternative forms. One of the students […]
Dryad Basketry: A Global Collection
The Dryad Furniture Showroom in Leicester was founded in 1907 by Harry Peach, a businessman who was interested in craft and design. He sold cane and wicker furniture, and during the First World War donated materials for wounded soldiers to make baskets as occupational therapy. This was so successful that he opened a handicrafts section […]
Tadek Beutlich: On and Off the Loom
Another week, another weaving exhibition. But Tadek Beutlich (1922-2011) was more than a weaver – he was also an artist, printmaker, and teacher. And his innovative weaving both on and off the loom revelled in the use of unconventional materials and techniques. A couple of years ago there was a great exhibition of his work […]
