The Textile Explorations was a FETAC level 4 course at Open Circle in 2014, focusing on hand embroidery. These experimental workshops are facilitated by textile artist Caroline Schofield in collaboration with print maker & textile artist Maeve Coulter.
The Textile Explorations course introduces participants to hand embroidery in a creative learning environment through workshops, talks and visits to exhibitions. The emphasis will be on creative and experimental embroidery using drawing and sketchbook research to feed into embroidery work.
Focusing on elements such as,
- Exploration into processes, techniques and materials
- Embroidery sampling
- Experiment with process, techniques, tools, equipment, fabrics and materials
- Designing and creating textile artwork through embroidery
- Exploration of colour, shape, form and texture
- Recording of ideas and materials
- Communicate ideas through embroidery
- Critical reflection
Caroline Schofield studied Textiles at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. Her work has been exhibited nationally & internationally. Recent exhibitions include InterLace in the National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, Irish Wave in Beijing and Culture Craft shown during Derry/Londonderry City of Culture including a residency to coincide with the exhibition and a second showing in the National Crafts Council. In 2013 Caroline was awarded a studio through Kilkenny County Council’s, ‘Not an Empty Space’.
Caroline Schofield works as a fibre artist using drawing as her medium. Her work explores themes about people, relationships and living, continually pushing and exploring boundaries through drawing and fibre in her manipulated Textile and Sculptural pieces. The Methodology underlying her work comes from long periods of work in the studio through exploration of fibre and drawing.
Maeve Coulter trained as a printmaker in the Limerick School of Art and Design and graduated with a BA in fine art in 1997. The following year while studying for a Diploma in Art Education she first began to explore textiles as a fine art medium. She now works in both disciplines, often combining print with fabric and stitch.
Maeve is a co-founder of Blackstack Studio, established in 2011 to promote and facilitate the art of print. She is a member of MADE in Kilkenny, a collective of 29 Kilkenny based craftspeople that work to advocate and foster excellence in authentic handmade craft.
Maeve Coulter is interested in the notion of making, un-making and re-making. Coulter begins with used fabrics that had a previous life as a garment, table linen or bedclothes. They are already imbued with memory and meaning. She print collographs, silkscreen and photographic images onto these remnants, then pleat, unpleat, re-print and re-pleat. Coulter applys this system like an incantation to impose order, only then to completely subvert it, to provoke disruption and irregularity. She allude to the cycles of life, to struggle and futility but also to the comfort derived from ritual and repetition.
The Textile Explorations are kindly supported by
