Stitch Stories
Personal Places, Spaces and Traces in Textile Art
Cas Holmes
ISBN 978-1-84994-274-4
Published by Batsford
www.pavilionbooks.com
Price £22.50/ $29.95
 
The book develops an idea that was first raised in Cas’s book The Found Object in Textile Art and looks more closely at how the world around you can be a starting point to develop your creative ideas.  By making a connection to people or places, it becomes a way in to building a narrative using stitch.  Each chapter that follows looks at aspects of recording information, how inspiration can be seized upon, albeit from the everyday surroundings or from your travels, adding detail to your work and telling a story.
 
Dealing with ways of recording your travels or observations is addressed early on.  We are given a wide view of the benefits of gathering information by journal, sketching, stitching, recording with digital media and mark-making.  There are checklists and suggestions of how you could approach making these observations. 
 
The book is all about finding inspiration and translating your experiences into textile art.  There are some exercises and mini-workshops to do which provide a wide range of techniques to try out, including wet appliqué, low-water immersion dyeing, monoprinting, transfer paints and printing.  All are presented with photos from Cas’s work, which mean there is a huge amount of fabulous surfaces that you will most likely gain a lot of inspiration from.
 
The exercises and tutorials are cocooned within a much broader exploration of what it is to create textile art that is meaningful to you, your community and the world.  The book is infused with the ideas and thoughts of a group of textile artists, all of whom have a connection to people, places or objects and who communicate their feelings through their art.  They range from a view of the world the artist sees (Anne Kelly, Noriko Endo), an affinity to the environment that develops into work over a period of time (Holly Story), recycling and upcycling (Peta Lloyd) or social activism (Mary Fisher).  These are only a handful of the artists featured, and all the work is beautifully selected.  The artists all have something valid and thought-provoking to say about the essence of textile art. 
 
The subject is treated subjectively, giving thoughts and suggestions of how to start a journey of discovery by showing you the motivations and considerations of textile artists around the world in order to create a world of art in which you can find your place.  It is a highly absorbing read, and I don’t think you will even break the surface after one read.

This book review can be found in the March 2015 issue of Workshop on the Web.

Textile Nature
Textile Techniques and Inspiration from the Natural World
Anne Kelly
ISBN 978-1849943437
Published by Batsford Books
www.pavilionbooks.com
Price £22.50
 
This book is coming out at just the right time for the reader to sit in their garden during a lovely summer and savour the delights that it has to offer.  Anne Kelly produces such beautiful work inspired by nature and she has gathered together work that details the prolific relationship between this world and textile artists.
 
It is a workbook on how to approach nature art and uses many examples from her own work and a whole host of local, national and international artists to illustrate.  The preponderance of local artists ties in very well with the idea of connecting to both the natural world and local community.  There are well-known textile artists such as Lindsay Taylor, Pauline Verrinder, Alice Fox, Kim Thittichai and Lesley Patterson-Marx with those who work predominantly in paper, such as Jennifer Collier and Louise Petiffer. 
 
It explores how all these artists work and guides the reader on how to do the same, whether by creating your own ‘nature table’, making larger scale pieces so you are forced to look more closely at the finer detail or sampling through stitch.  My particular favourite section was Taking Flight which looked at the use of birds and insects as motifs. 
 
This is one of the most beautiful books to come out this year and is definitely worth delving into.  We get to see a huge amount of beautiful and varied work by the many artists involved but it has the vision of Anne Kelly guiding us through the subject matter that makes this a must-have.
 
In June 2016 issue of Workshop on the Web

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Living in a Fairytale World
Mr Finch
ISBN 978-0-9913419-7-9
Published by Glitterati Incorportated
$50 / £30
Available through Amazon in the UK
www.glitteratiincorporated.com
 
 
This book has been highly anticipated all around the globe by fans of the textile artist Mr Finch.  This book does not disappoint.  For those who have glimpsed into his world of creatures and woodland flora and fauna through his Etsy shop, Facebook page and pins on Pinterest, his creations are brought together to form a cohesive whole and show how his work interacts to create a mythology of its own.
 
A Preface isn’t usually the focal point of a review, but this one, written by Justine Hand, is so beautifully written and perfectly encapsulates the essence of what the book is about, that it requires a mention.  She explains the world of Mr Finch in such magical terms, that you cannot wait to wade further into the book and explore.
 
The book is very well structured. There is a conversation with Mr Finch, which is a short but perfect length, as it introduces the artist and his methods without overpowering the work that you will be seeing.  The book is divided into sections according to the type of work it is: Insectum, Avialae, Funghi and Mammalia.  Each section is filled with a huge number of photographs of the work with details provided at the start of sizes, what they are made of and interesting facts.  The photographs are beautiful, and show off the detail and execution of each piece of work.  Some are photographed on display, some in Mr Finch’s studio, and some in a slightly more surreal setting, such as one of my favourite photos, of a spider having a tea party and pouring a cuppa.  You get to see the works in fantastic detail, some of the ways in which Mr Finch works (he talks of creating and storing a multitude of birds’ legs for future use) and different methods of presentation.  There are quotes from the artist dotted throughout and these serve to create layers of this world that exists, where toadstools are the staple of fairytales, and his hares are always made with ears straight up, so that they are always listening.  These snippets all add to your perception of a world where the animals assume human characteristics, and can be cloaked or dressed in ruffs or bow ties.  Animals that we perceive as constantly moving and frenetic are caught in a tableau of stillness and serenity, and there is great beauty to be found in that.
 
This book is such a wonderful investment and shows off the work of Mr Finch perfectly.  In all of our mad lives, you could sit down with this book and lose yourself in it.