Sara Impey at TVCT

Saturday was our TVCT meeting. (Thames Valley Contemporary Textiles) Sara Impey gave a talk in the morning. Her work was great to see up close. It was also interesting to see the directions her ideas have been taking her through the years. I have uploaded a few photos from the many I took of her quilts throughout the talk.

This was from her letters in a grid series she is known for.

This was made in a similar manner, but with a 'blank' (unthreaded) needle on plastic. It creates a lacy effect which can be seen better when held up to the light.

This is a newer direction in her work - colours with alternative word definitions. The colour shapes are meant to represent pills. A piece like this is touring with Quilt National. It is called 'Bitter Pill', the words are ironic commentary on what is said about society's issues. There is a detail photo from that piece here.

and this is also newer - speech bubbles. A lot more complex to design the layout than the letter grids.

Of course this is a very small selection. For the most part Sara uses grid paper and pencils to design the work. Even the grid pieces take a lot of planning for the word placement to work right.

If you ever get the chance to hear Sara talk, she is quite entertaining as well! We really enjoyed her. One of the best bits was to discover she feels a bit like most of us about the work. At the start she is excited. After a bit she wishes she never started. Midway she hates it. But as it nears the end, she gets excited again about it but is very glad to be done!

Sara has recently written a book 'Text in Textile Art' Published by Batsford. (The link is from Amazon, but I see you can get it from WHSmith.) It includes work of other artists as well as some of her work. I have put it on my Christmas list! She had some copies, but I hadn't the money for a book this month.

You can see some better photos of the grid type pieces here. She was invited to submit work for 'Quilts 1700 – 2010' at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2010. Her piece 'Punctuation' is now part of the permanent collection at the V+A. A photo and description of it can be found here.