Chapter 13: Thee Artists

 Cas Holmes

I have two books on my shelf by Cas Holmes: "The Found Object in Textile Art" (2010) and "Textile Landscape Painting with Cloth in Mixed Media"; her most recently published book "Stitch Stories Personal Places, Spaces and Traces in Textile Art" is on my wish list.  Her philosophy is there in the titles.  For instance she does not distinguish between art and craft.  Instead she uses  her drawing skills (she has a Fine Arts Degree) and those of working with paper (she did two periods of long-term study in Japan) and combines these with other materials to convey meaning.

13:1 Cas Holmes

Cas Holmes work is informed by personal experience, places she's visited, her Romany grandmother and old and forgotten textiles.

13:2  Domestic Mapping

Cas Holmes is also interested in the interface between the natural and the built world, the seasons and man's impact on the earth.

13:3  Winter Grasses

Much of the material in Cas Holmes' pieces is reused, often crumpled and torn.  She re-purposes such items, organising,  rearranging and layering them with other materials, cutting and piecing, then drawing with stitch to express her thoughts.  Her finished work is tactile and atmospheric, suffused with light.

13:4 Trees

13:5  Urban Nature

All aspects of Cas Holmes' work serves its meaning:whether as a book, hanging, or individual art work.  Although she keeps a sketchbook each new work is not pre-planned but is given time to evolve.

Lois Walpole

 Lois Walpole is a designer, maker of baskets, furniture and art works.  The artefacts she makes combine the techniques and often the forms of basketry with the detritus of consumerism and the natural materials of her immediate environment.

13:6  Lois Walpole

In doing research on Lois Walpole I came across a radio interview in which she talked about her practice.  She is a free-lance artist who also curates national and international exhibitions.  In addition to her own work, she makes to commission, her creative work a facet of home life.  She also writes and teaches.  Exhibitions are a driving force behind her work, which she comments has no point unless others see it, though she speaks cautiously about selling her work.

As her practice has developed she has moved away from using natural materials, drawn by the bright primary colours of waste which was so easily available in London where she used to live.  (She now splits her time between Shetland and France.)  Sustainability is a key feature of her work and though she still grows some materials in her garden, the majority of those she uses are recycled.  The essential point is that she no longer buys any materials. 

 Lois Walpole's work is shaped by what is available. The surfaces of each piece are decoratively rich and beautifully finished, giving no hint of the material's origin.  This work began with juice cartons and as is illustrated below, now encompasses anything and everything.  Through the skills of the maker and basketry techniques inconsequential used items have been made new.  Not all of her work is small, during lockdown she has been working on repairing a sofa, doing 155 hours of work without any expense!

13:7 Coiled Bowl 
Crown caps and wire

13:8  Handy Numbers
Telephone Directory, plastic sleeves, camera strap, computer key

13:9  Pokeys 
 Found ropes from the Weaving Ghosts Exhibition 2016

More recently Lois Walpole is directing her attention to preserving basket making techniques and passing them on.  She is also looking at the repair of baskets.  

Lois Walpole is also involved in the world of education, from A-level to contemporary design courses.  She would very much like to educate the general public about basket making and the skills required, suggesting doing this in a television programme.

Magie Hollingworth

Magie Hollingworth was a maker from childhood, dressing her dolls in handmade clothes as well as furnishing their house.  After a Fine Arts degree in painting she returned to textiles making works in paper mache and in the last twenty years has become a designer of tapestries.  Magie Hollingsworth talks about being self taught  and materials led, exploring wet paper and wool and gradually, in her words, "making progress".

The way an artist works is revealing. When I hear them talking I hope to find advice or have my own evolving ideas confirmed. Magie Hollingsworth has many enthusiasms -- paper, tapestry design, her garden, about which she is passionate, and cooking.  Her approach isn't single-minded, each train of thought feeds the others.  She even points to the holes in her tapestries commenting that they not only appear in her paper vessels but also in the clothes she chooses.   

Having a concurrently running number of activities in her making life does not indicate a laissez-faire attitude.  Magie Holingworth responds to the discipline of deadlines.  She also comments on the need for boundaries, the necessity of limitations.  She doesn't keep a sketchbook.

13:10  Magie Hollingworth

It's indefinable the way one is drawn to a piece of work.  We have a lovely gallery in one of our nearest small towns called Bircham Gallery, which retained its name when it moved to Holt quite some years ago.  What I noticed on display was a vessel: a pod shaped piece that at first I thought was ceramic, but when I picked it up, it was oh so light and turned out to have been made of paper.  It's fourteen centimetres high, eight centimetres at its widest point, the surface ridged from base to top and a beautiful matte but rich black-brown hue.  Its proportions are beautiful.  Its lack of symmetry is pleasurable to my eye, speaking as it does of the times through which it grew, the weather that shaped its growth and seeds it may well have harboured.

                                                                                  

13:11  The One I Bought

13:12  Subsequent Versions

The vessels below are also appealing:  I like their fragility and translucency.

13:13

Not all Magie Hollingworth's work is in neutral colours.  In the two works below she uses pages from vintage albums to decorate her paper works.

13:14

There is a playfulness in these last two works, subverting the function of the practical into something purely decorative and saying something more through her choice of surface material.

On the whole Magie Holingworth's colour palette is muted.  Beach colours are her favourite -- the greys and steel blues of a calm environment lifted by bright accents.  Realism and surface quality are important to her, as is the stitch by stitch creation of her tapestries.