Sophie is an British embroidery artist currently based in the UK.
After graduating in 2012 she started King Sophie's World to create wearable works of art, bridging the gap between art and fashion.
She is inspired by how we can use clothing to make a statement about ourselves and the world around us, how our bodies can be used like a canvas.
She has worked on a range of designs of various size and scope, for all kinds of clients.
Previous commissions include Gwen Stefani, Absolut Vodka and Sassy World.
She has been featured in Nylon, Lucky, Ballad Of, Teo, Galore, Sneaky, Vogue.com, Buzzfeed, The Coveteur, NME & so on.
Sophie is a self taught embroidery artist, she approaches each piece with an emphasis on craftsmanship and creativity.
She creates each sequin patch by hand from start to finish, meticulously embroidering each sequin individually, creating highly intricate one of a kind works of art.
Bethan is an artist and practice-based PhD candidate at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. She uses 3D visualisation software, print and sculpture to explore notions of digital tactility, new forms of immaterial artistic labour and (dis)embodiment in screen-space.
Recent exhibitions include:
SOFTBODIES, Project Space at Leeds University, Leeds (2017) ;
BERLIN CAMOUFLAGE, collaboration with Duygu Atceken, Plattenbauvereinigung, Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin (2016) ;
NEW PRUNK, Bauhaus Str. 1, Weimar (2015) ;
TRANSMIT/TRANSLATE, collaboration with Golriz Behgoo, WeArtGallery, Weimar (2015) ;
STRANGELY FAMILIAR, collaboration with Golriz Behgoo, Mariannenstraße 9, Weimar (2014) ;
BLIND PLOTTING, group show, The Arches, Glasgow (2012).
I am obsessed with imagery, bright colors and shiny things not unlike a packrat or raven. I always have been .I will freely admit that I am a grangerizer, an appropriationist, gathering materials from a variety of influences and sources. I feel no shame in doing so .My intention is to preserve these visual metaphors for generations to come and to honor the source. The imagery that I use is gathered from a variety of influences and sources mainly from my childhood and the possessions that surround me. I continue to be drawn to the dark underbelly of life .Which is often portrayed with a pretty candy-colored coating.
In 2013, I was fortunate to be selected by Golden Paints to be Artist/Educator. Last year I received several public art commissions. The first project was building two 14 foot tall, anatomically correct
giraffes. This proved to be quite the challenge .The second project involved painting traffic boxes for the City of Eugene, Oregon. The third: writing a book on photo emulsion screen-printing I enjoy the challenge of working with various surfaces. While drawn to the latest technology my true love remains hand embroidery.
Orly Cogan born in Jaffa, Israel. Educated at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in NYC and The Maryland Institute College of Art. Several of Cogan’s pieces are in permanent museum collections in Europe such as The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Oslo and in the U.S.A. including The Museum of Art and Design and The Brooklyn Museum. Cogan has been exhibiting her work for over two decades and has been at the forefront of the fiber arts movement in contemporary art. She has exhibited in various galleries throughout the USA and Europe.
Cogan has been included in several notable museum exhibitions internationally, including “Sur Le Fil” Musee International Des Arts Modeste, Sete France, "The Needle’s Eye" The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Oslo, Textile Biennale, The Museum Rijswik, “Pretty Tough” Contemporary Storytelling at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, “Pricked, Extreme Embroidery” The Museum of Arts & Design, NYC, “Material Girls” The Riverside Museum, California,"I want Candy" Hudson River Museum, NY, "She will always be younger then us" Textile Museum of Toronto with Judy Chicago, and Between I & Thou, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art among others.
In the fall of 2018 Cogan will have a solo exhibition at The Bratttleboro Museum & Art Center.
Sarah-Joy Ford is an artist and curator working with textiles intersectionally between feminist and queer theory. She is a graduate of The School of the Damned and co-directs Seize Projects, an artist led organisation that co-ordinates an itinerant program of exhibitions and events. Recent exhibitions include ‘Wish you were here’ Stryx Gallery, ‘Ebc006’ at East Bristol Contemporary Gallery (2016), ‘Lives, Love and Loss’ at Fenton House, National Trust (2016). She has current work installed in the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery that was commissioned as part of The Yorkshire Year of the Textile.
Sarah-Joy's work is labour intensive textile practice, the performative and transformative nature of such acts is extremely valuable in its ability to shift objects from the ordinary to the extraordinary, questioning the strangeness of the everyday. Working with craft techniques situates her practice within an alternative history of art and objects; one that incorporates quilting, banner making, knitting, folk art and disobedient objects. This orientation toward outherness is inherently invested in the idea of queerness; in the movement from marginalisation to empowerment.
Through the medium of hand embroidery, I create art which is accessible and inclusive of people and ideas that have been excluded from Western art history. Im passionate about uplifting and celebrating the creativity of people of colour. Most of my work stems from being autobiographical; exploring my gender, sexuality, mixed ethnicity and mental illness through bold motifs and compositions which pack a punch. My work aims to showcase how powerful textiles can be as medium to communicate socio-political messages.
Tilleke uses a mixture of graphic quality, content, and humor in her embroidery on linen. The humor in her work is typical for her Jewish background, a mixture of a laugh and a tear. Tilleke finds inspiration in daily life and her work reminds of graffiti and of traditional samplers. She uses mixed media with a focus on hand embroidery on fine linen.
Tilleke Schwarz (1946) was born and lives in the Netherlands. She was an exchange student in 1965 in California (USA) and studied General Arts and Textile Design at the Academy for Arts and Industry, Enschede, and Textile-experiments and Drawing at the Free Academy for Modern Art, The Hague, both in the Netherlands. Embroidery she learned from her mother.
Tilleke Schwarz's work has exhibits internationally, including at the Friesian Museum and Museum Rijswijk, Netherlands; Museum of Arts & Design, New York; Textile Triennial, Lodz, Poland; Fiber Art International, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; International Textile Triennial and the Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania.
Katie is a Glasgow and London based artist and designer currently studying for a BA Hons in Fashion Knitwear at Kingston University. Katie works primarily within textile art, using yarn as a medium for knitted and crocheted pieces, as well as writing poetry which gets fed in to all her artworks either in the form of text or illustration. Her work is primarily directed by the poetry she writes, that coming first before being grown in to an artwork. These poems and therefore artworks explore the way in which she chooses to navigate life through interactions and relationships and the day to day observations she makes.
Rebecca based in Newcastle and recently awarded the Woon Foundation Fellowship by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Northumbria University. Graduated from Manchester School of Art, Fine Art 2016. Group exhibitions include: Paint By Number, Studio24, Leeds (2016); Woon Foundation Painting and Sculpture Prize, BALTIC39, Newcastle (2016); '...In Dark Times', Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2017); 'Slowing Into Form', Vane Gallery, Newcastle (2017). Upcoming solo shows: 'Tentative explorations into past and future selves', STCFTHOTS, Leeds (May 2017); Woon Fellowship Final Show, Gallery North, Newcastle (Sept 2017)
In my work sculptural forms, objects, artefacts and documents map the lived, nuanced and paradoxical experience of gendered beings across time. These formal qualities that reference the body also suggest a certain psychological state, as dichotomous elements exist in harmony and conflict. Attempting to invoke an embodied feeling as a form of empathy.
Eleanor Edwardes studied embroidery at Manchester School of Art (2010-13). She currently works from a studio in Gloucestershire and creates art works inspired by traditional needlecraft which reference contemporary culture.
“I am inspired by the history of embroidery and stereotypes surrounding hand-stitch. My practice is often based on an element of historical research and I enjoy adding to collected materials which have a previous life.
Stitch Graffiti is a collection of found hand embroideries to which I have subtly added my own quirky or alternative interventions; breathing new life into old pieces by bringing them into the twenty first century whilst appreciating the time, care and techniques that originally went into making them.
Each piece is ‘signed’ with a cross-stitched monogram, or graffiti-artist’s ‘tag’ – a nod to the tradition of linen marking. This is another way of adding my personal stamp.” Her most recent embroideries depict the traditional stitched motif of a Victorian crinoline lady engaged in modern misadventures.'
Cut Cloth - Exhibiting Artists
Eleanor Edwardes
Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton
Katie Lundie
Tilleke Schwarz
Hannah Hill
Sarah-Joy Ford
Orly Cogan
Wendy Huhn
Bethan Hughes
Sophie King
Private View, Friday 9th June
Time: 6pm – 8.30pm
The Portico Library
Exhibition continues until 5th July
Please click on the images to visit the artist's websites.