Site specific Artist using own created textiles, laser cuts and hand block printed wallpaper to engage with narratives of landscapes, social history and place.
My field of Art has been knitted textiles for a long time, including a Masters in Knitting at Nottingham Trent University 2016 – 2018. I often placed my knitted textiles into the landscape to create site specific photographic art which explored the social histories of women and the making of knitted articles.
I am currently working on a wall based knitted jumper piece called, ‘I Cannot Reach You.’ It is taking into consideration the Japanese concept of 間 （Ma) – the silences and the spaces in between all things, and relating it to the relationship between me and my sister.
I would like to learn about the meaning and concept of the Japanese word Ma 間and relate it to the way in which I experience life, don’t you think it would make life fuller? We do not have this word or meaning in England and to look at the spaces is as interesting as looking at the solid things.
I would like to explore what ‘Ma’, looks like to me, in the space between all things and use textiles and print to express my new understanding of this. If you are Japanese and have and wisdom to share, please do.
I have recently started to develop Cyanotype prints using pressed wild flowers to create images that are often half present, a little ghostly. I am looking at making wallpaper strips to utilise the cyanotype printing process to create the deepest blue papers with hints of British wild flowers, to look a little at the spaces in between in the prints. Yesterday, I made to sample strips out in the yard at bloc studios, where I have a small space to work.
Currently, I am experimenting and, as you can see, the process is open to risk and failure, but the two wallpaper strips are becoming more loved by me because of the spaces in between. One has less impressions of the flowers than the other due to both my impatience of removing the flowers and due to the wind shifting them but maybe just pure blue is lovely enough with a hint of a story of flowers in smaller areas – less ‘gilding the lily’ to speak.
Today, I hung the papers on my wall at home to really look at what is present and what is a faint mark only, and what is in the spaces. I like the results, in some way, they remind me of the Japanese screens that I saw in the temples in Kyoto. But maybe I need to make them more sparse. Let me know your thoughts.
If you would like to join me in my next online workshops, they are in the link here.
If you would like to contact me about hand printed cyanotype wallpaper strips, please do so 😊
If you would like to follow me on instagram, where there are lots more images, then, I am in the link here
I have posted previously, that I am currently working on a textile piece called, ‘I Cannot Reach You.’
It is a piece about the space in the relationship between me and my sister. The knitted piece will also encapsulate the Japanese concept of Ma, the spaces in between 間 （ま、Ma) the silences, the unspoken past, the misunderstandings in the past and present, it could be in the silence when I hear the sound of a cup being placed in a saucer during a visit. Ma is, the things we know but never say.
My sister and I were born eleven months apart, I on 26/06/1963 and she on 27/05/1964. Our mother dressed us identically for about 12 years until we probably tried to impress our own tastes upon the clothes we were wearing. At that time, my Grandad enjoyed the latest photographic technology available to a working class man – a small camera then a polaroid camera. He took many photographs, particularly in 1970 when I was seven and my sister six years old. In the photographs, my sister and I are beside each other but rarely touching – there is an unspoken physical and emotional space between us. All of the images were ‘set up’ in a way that my mother wanted to show that she dressed her daughters well. In the empty space between my sister and I, there seems to be a lack of intimacy or connection, we are not smiling in any of the images. I remember very little of growing up but I do remember the feel of every fabric of those clothes. Clothes carry so many unspoken signifiers – wealth / or not, clean / or not, fashionable / or not, comfortable / or not. I cannot remember much about my childhood.
Here, we are ‘well turned out’, as my Mother would say. For years, our Nana, my mother’s mother, knitted us identical cardigans to match the identical dresses. She used the wool available to her in those days – nylon from Woolworths.
For one month – from the end of May to June 2024, my sister and I are both 60 years old and are very much ‘like chalk and cheese’. I love my sister dearly and carefully, and she loves me, but I cannot reach her. Our love is not one of laughter or discussion or going places together or tea time calls or spontaneous catch ups or quick visits or trips away together – it is one of careful organisation of a preplanned time and place and length of visit to suit my beautiful sister, who has begun to shut the world out. And, believe me, I can understand that. I cannot reach her but I try. I wait, I hope, I try to reassure but, all I can do is be beside her for just slightly more than one hour at a time that she can manage and I have learned to understand that gift of time. Being with her makes me very happy.
I have initially, knitted something that is recognised as a jumper but it isn’t only that. The wearable, knitted jumper sits well within the intersection between craft / skill / materiality / wool/ textiles/ conceptual art / family / sister’s heritage and cross cultural discussion. ‘I Cannot Reach You,’ is an expression of the space in between us, using the medium of a skilled knitting practice to produce a jumper, that could be for me to wear but that it has a name – ‘I Cannot Reach You,’ it has one sleeve knitted slightly longer than necessary, ending in a knitted glove. The second sleeve knitted in plaited and aran knitted stitches – I chose the Fair Isle for its intricacy and my love of Shetland culture and I chose the Aran sleeve to represent how I plait my hair. Giving the jumper a name, never wearing it and placing it upon the wall, makes it art, right? Textile Art. Now, I am knitting a matching jumper in identical patterns as the first 100 colour piece but this time, it will be knitted in the colours my sister likes, with a blackberry or plain knit sleeve to relate to my sister and how she wears her hair. I hope that one day, we can both wear our respective pullovers and stand closely side by side. Without a space between. But, at the moment, I feel that when the second pullover is finally finished, both will be hung side by side, not touching but with a space in between. Ma 間 （ま、Ma)
If you are interested in the Fair Isle Pullover worksheet, it is here in the link
This weekend, I have watched two films online – the first, Jo Jo Rabbit and the second, ‘Hunt for the Wilder People’, both directed, (amongst many other things ) by Taika Waititi, a New Zealand Film Maker, then of course, I looked up Taika and watched his TedX talk from 13 years ago and already saw the influences from his part Jewish back ground in his writing of Jo Jo Rabbit, and in which he stars as Jo Jo’s imaginary friend, Hitler.
In his TedX talk, Taika, says all of the things he does, ‘they’re all tools’ he painted, wrote poetry, made films, travelled, was a comedian and all these things visibly influenced his work then and now.
I looked around at my tools, knitting, crochet, travel, drawing, photography, writing, sewing, colour, landscape, and noticed that, of course, these are my tools. The tools I am bringing to my new studio -which, at the moment looks slightly hopeless on the output front. I am playing with cyanotypes from attending a small workshop here in Sheffield. My hands are dry from washing papers out in water, the washed out liquid colouring my fingers. I wondered if the studio is one expense too much for me because I will not earn from it. And yet, here I am, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, after visiting the Buddhist Centre at Walkley’s, Summer Fair, I am here, present, in this tiny room with windows on both sides, sunshine pouring in, Gorecki Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, playing to me and I am content.
I’ve opened my tin of Lomo photographs from when I lived in the Hutongs of Beijing, the winter of 2010/11 to remind me of the far off places that I have been and to bring a thread of future travel here in to the old steel works building – which embeds me in Sheffield.
I am learning new things and Ideas are coming, practice led ideas but for now, I am excusing my inability to produce anything profound, by say, ‘ I am playing’, though for how long, I do not know.
If you are in Sheffield and want to come and visit me, get in touch. If you would like to support me, then please buy a knitting pattern, this will help pay for my studio 😊 the patterns are here, and very good. The patterns are here
I am making cyanotypes with all the pressed flowers from my garden and from hanging over walls in the city. This is my favourite one so far. I actually like the accidental finding of washi tape that is holding the tiny daisy in place.
When I moved to Shetland, I just flippantly mentioned, ‘write to me’ in one of my instagram posts after I shared my writing space in the croft house. Over 100 people sent postcards, this time, it is different. I am in the city, but I am still me.
Today, I am in an old steel works in Sheffield, If you fancy sending me a postcard from where ever you live, then I would love to receive it. I am in
Studio 10, Bloc Studios, 4 Sylvester Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S1 4RN
Tiggy out on the lane outside the croft house I bought in Levenwick.
July, I made the decision to return to the city and share the reasons why.
July starts like this:-
July – Shetland
A month of sea swimming at Levenwick, at Spiggie, then on the west side.
Vegetables growing in builders’ sacks that I filled with sieved soil, in the roofless byre.
Speckle of Wild purple orchids peeping out of the long grass.
A long line of sea urchin shells residing in my newly painted deep bathroom window sill.
I return to sit upon a hill, by the sea, where the gulls drop the sea urchins to crack open for dinner – it is, Sea Urchin hill.
The old flagged back yard is dug out and cleared of a hundred years of weeds.
I cradle a large hedgehog curled in a great ball in the palm of both my hands, at Sumburgh Head where the fog horn sounds and the light spears out in the night.
The beautiful gift of a full Fleece from Francis, shorn from a ewe that I greatly admired daily in his field.
The most exquisite incomparable morning light over sea and sky.
The return of heavy fog for days and days.
I write ‘worry’ in the sand at the beach and let the sea wash it away but my worry still lingers in every moment.
The ‘Dear Susan’ jumper is finished – it glows upon the sands
I met with Hazel Tindel in town. She lifted my spirits and didn’t know that I had felt so low
Reading Saturday’s guardian on the bench on Sunday, a Sheffield potted baby oak tree at my feet.
The inside of the understairs cupboard door is papered perfectly with the wallpaper that I lifted from the derelict house.
My first intrepid knitting visitors to the house for a colour blending workshop are welcomed – A hint of things to come.
A visit back to my city of Sheffield, where a daughter meets me for 3 hours from London and I know. I just know.
Here is the beginning of July’s post – extract
Moments on the edge
Have you ever driven to the very edge of the rock upon which you live, so that you can see the curvature of the earth on the horizon in the fading light of the day? To sit, to knit, to think, to feel? To Be grateful for this roller coaster of beautiful life? Have you sat still long enough to hear the call of a thousand birds beneath the whir of a lighthouse light gently turning and the sea slightly roaring below your feet? This is where time stops and the world slows down.
I had begun to think that I am not happy, that I have little happiness in my life, so I decided to note any moments of happiness in a diary – so that I might recognise all the small moments that make me happy during. The happiness is fleeting, brief but those moments add up to make the days with happiness inside. By reading the logs in the diary, I regained that small moment and it made me happy again. here are my logs from the last 5 days.
Happiness Diary 2024
23rd June. 8am
The early sun warms my face and arms whilst I knit quietly on the bench out front and Tig preens himself gently purring by my side – not quite touching me but connected, non the less. He allows me to hold his paws, moving through each one individually. I admire the splaying of his toes and claws in his comfort and watch his flicking tip of his striped tail. My favourite thing is when he crosses my lap and his hair arms brush over the skin of my forearms; I never move, I wait for the brief touch, whilst quietly knitting on the bench out front.
23rd June
The pleasure of a working, functional, above adequate shower for the first time in my tiny bathroom.
23rd June
Talking with my neighbour, J, about cyanotype and giving her a small print that I made at the workshop yesterday, of a daisy cluster – it’s not so good yet but I like it enough to give it.
23rd June
Came home at 2:30 to Jess’s birthday present on the doorstep. It’s a fit bit watch and scales – it took me 2:5 hours to set it up from watching youtube videos, having to launch a new gmail email and linking app to watch to scales to me. I had a real sense of achievement and perseverance and problem solving and after it was all working, I biked to the gym and swam for half an hour then biked back. What the watch can do, lifted my spirits. It is a very generous gift and what makes me happy is the love of a son to buy it, my ability to finally get it all working and that it lifts my energy because it is watching me.
24th June
The first cut of my sweet peas, placed with tiny stems of scented mock orange blossom in a green glass vase – makes me deeply satisfied.
25th June
Laughing lightly, connecting briefly at work with a work colleague over something that seems ridiculous.
26th June 6:30am
Cycling, through the mist, on my way through endcliffe park, I see a great young heron fly overhead coming to land in the pond, only to lift again and gracefully flap its wings to lift high. Such beauty.
26th June 10:00am
It is my birthday, I am 61 years old. On passing the place where Mr Beddoes rests at Edensor, Chatsworth church yard, I move away the weeds and say to him, 24 years without him in my life. I rise to walk into the church, and there it is – a patchwork quilt that I made in 1991, stitching over the signatures of 250 people including Dukes, Duchesses, Earls, local estate workers, Vicars, mothers, sisters, daughters, sons, brothers and fathers. All there, I charged £2 per square and donated over £500 to a charity that I no longer remember. But the quilt survives, on the back wall of the great church designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, such memories flooding back from 33 years ago, many people now long gone.
26th June noon.
I went to meet my beautiful sister and immediately, she talked over her sorrows. It makes me love her even more.
26th June, 4:30pm
Arriving at Verity’s house on my birthday, to a banner of bunting spelling out Happy Birthday, and beautiful ice cubes in the shape of flowers with strawberries inside and a plate of beautiful cakes, the table set in the garden with cloth and napkins made me very happy. Such care and love and attention just for me. I greatly appreciate Verity who has been a friend since 1998. And, I love her too.
26th June – 8:30pm
Talking with Patti, on the phone about happiness. How the briefness of fleeting moments of love or beauty or learning new exciting experiences and creativity makes me happy. She told me about her solstice morning at 4:30am and that made me happy that she had experienced a magical moment.
I began to look back at the few logs I had started in my happiness and realised that they are fleeting, maybe 2 or 3 minutes each but that every day, I am happy when I thought that I had not been. We also talked about the analysis of the moments that had made me happy and I realised that they fell into 3 categories, Love, beauty, and learning/or new experiences. We cannot create happiness moments but to understand what makes us happy can surely help.
Such a lovely birthday, filled with simple, happy moments of joy and surprise and beauty.
27th June,
Sitting outside Park Hill flats at The Pearl, with a cherry bakewell and soda split between my work colleague Jane and I. sitting in the sunshine, feeling free, talking and laughing with such iconic architecture in the background, made me happy.
28th June.
Lying on the bed, beside my old cat, him curled tightly in a circle. I touch his head and he uncurls his body, shifting it into the negative space between my chin and chest. He purrs, his little old paws unfurl, he kneads the bed sheet in satisfaction. He is old, he is safe, he is happy. This makes me happy.
28th June
Picking the 2nd cut of my sweet peas and any individual pretty flowers from my tiny border of flowers, to place in a glass, on the doorstep mat of my neighbour. 😊
28th June
I was walking from the gym in the gentle breeze and faint sunshine, I realised that I was singing to myself. I felt it, that brief but discernible hint of happiness – just sitting above calm and content.
I write the moment into my diary and think of how much happiness I can fill inside this small book. That makes me happy. So, can thinking about happy moments, make me happy? Can I lift myself by reading past happiness?
28th June
Seeing two young student girls bending down, talking to Alfie on the pavement outside my flat. So cute, so caring – when Alfie normally avoids people.
I lived in Beijing for the winter of 2010 and used 3 cameras, my favourite being my plastic analogue Lomo camera. The beauty of Lomo images is that you don’t know if you have captured anything at all on film, or if they will develop and when you get your little pack of prints, all of the images are a beautiful surprise. Yesterday, I got to look back at my lovely Lomo images from the time that I lived in Beijing and Suzhou, by using the negatives in a cyanotype workshop, led by the lovely Andy Dolan held at Carousel Print Studios, here in Sheffield.
I know I had a great time because I forgot about my bike and its safety and I didn’t think about what I could eat next ( much).
Here are some of my cyanotype prints from this workshop and Andy looking brilliant in the last image outside Exchange Place Studios, run by Yorkshire Art Space.
I already have lots of new ideas for grand projects including wallpaper. (why start small) I have rented an artist studio for 2 months to see how I go. It’s good when you find something new that’s exciting. It is good to learn new skills and make new stuff.
here is my previous wallpaper spell, but going forward, I not print lace, I will print summer flowers in wonder blue – just now sure how I can make it work yet.
One hundred colours, or just ten in your Fair Isle projects?
I am knitting in preparation for the workshop on Friday – to show how alternative colours will look to my normal many many colours that I normally choose for a project.
This time, I am working with the colours that my sister likes but she doesn’t know that I asked her her favourite colours just so that I could knit them for her.
My pullover – the workings you can find in the rich tapestry of resources in the Fair Isle Pullover chart worksheet, is made up of about one hundred colours.
My next pullover, knitted to the same charts as the first, will use about ten colours – with variations of greys, shetland black, madder, navy, mustard and a cyclamen colour. I’m already enjoying how it is turning out. – my sister has far more subtle choices in colour.
If you would still like to join me at my free online workshop on Saturday 22nd Just 3-4pm UK time, then buy the worksheet and I will be sending emails with joining instructions up until Weds 18th June.
Let me know what you think to just the black and grey version of this project.
Also – access to online facebook group for everyone who has bought the pattern too.
I live in Sheffield. Whilst I was sorting out yarn this afternoon for my 2nd Fair Isle Pullover, Richard Hawley’s ‘People’, was playing on Six radio. I stopped to listen. Sheffield, is, I have realised my home – I have lived here since 1998 but honestly, I didn’t realise until a conversation with my son last week, that ‘I live in Sheffield’ . I may sound odd to you but to me, I have always been looking to other places, mostly far away.
Saturday 8th June, my bike outside the beautiful Three Tunns pub, Sheffield
I have got on a train and got off and lived and worked in China, I’ve lived in Salzburg, London, and of course, Shetland. I have been a traveller for some years and travel is part of my art but, honestly, I have only just realised that, Sheffield is where I live, where I want to live; it is my home. And then, Richard sings, ‘People’ and I could understand every word – every place mentioned and how people are called, ‘Love’ it is a colloquialism – People in this city, call us ‘Luv’ – On the bus, at work, at the fruit and veg markets stall, at the chip shop, about town, not always, but a certain generation, it is often.
I love Sheffield, the city centre is a bit broken, the SHU university is financially on its financial knees, and there isn’t much here but there is also everything here. Art, music, friends, cinema days, festivals, history, vintage shops, people – ‘who fight for every breath’ and so much more. I am proud of this gritty city.
Anyway, I digress, whilst I was setting up my little video of my swatch book for my new Swatch workshop on 5th July, Richard’s new song – ‘People’ came on the radio. I found it quite haunting. It is love of a city and a life and people. So, I recorded the video with Richard singing in the background. It seemed quite fitting.
I am not sure how the swatch workshop on 5th July, will pan out yet but I am asking for registrations of interest.
I am also doing a one off special FREE online zoom workshop for everyone who has bought the Fair Isle Pullover worksheet. The session will help anyone who has bought the worksheet, to develop ideas of colour, alignment of Fair Isle motifs in your project and ideas to help you get the best out of the worksheet to make a great project – it could be a hat, scarf, jumper of vest. This session is on 22nd June at 3-4pm UK time. You don’t have to register for this one – I will email everyone who bought the pattern with zoom joining instructions on 19th June – so you still have time to buy the worksheet, if you have been thinking about it. It is here.
If I was still living in Shetland, my workshops were sold out within 30 minutes of advertising them. Now they take time because I live in a city far away from Shetland. But, I am still the same person, and my workshops have developed into much better experiences than when I was in Shetland. Come and join me.
TWO NEW DATES FOR MY ONLINE COLOUR BLENDING WORKSHOP IN JULY
It is a piece about the space between me and my sister, born 11 months apart.
It has been one year in the making.
It is love.
Our mother dressed my sister and I in identical clothes for about 12 years until we found the voices to be different. We were born in 1963 and 1964. You did what you were told. And, we were told. Clothes say so much about the wearer, about the social history, about what people what to portray, about many things.
My nana knitted us identical cardigans – probably for the same amount of years. But my sister and I were very different people. And we are very different people today. I am not sure if differences in kids was either an accepted or a noticed thing in the 60’s. It certainly wasn’t in our house.
I will knit another piece, in the colours that my sister likes – Black, Grey, Navy, Dark Red and Mustard and place it alongside this piece, made up of over 90 colours and I will hang it beside this piece. I am interested in the Japanese concept of Ma 間 the spaces and the silences in between all things. when the 2 pieces are placed alongside each other, they will show the spaces between us.
For now, this peice will be entered into the Harley Foundation open, because I am regional, because it is art, because, it is love.
On a practical level, I will be starting a knitalong for the Fair Isle worksheet that accompanies this knitted pullover and will email everyone who has bought this pattern to ask if they/you would like to join a free 1 hours zoom session on the worksheet and how I made the pullover with a Q&A, so that they / you can join in the knitalong and use the worksheet to your advantage – to make what you want – hat, scarf, vest, pullover.
If you would like to join me, I will be starting in about a month.
I have knitted something that is recognised as a jumper but it isn’t only that. The knitted piece now sits well within the intersection between craft / skill / materiality / woo/ textiles/ conceptual art / family / heritage and cross cultural discussion. It is nearly finished and it has a name. It is named, ‘I cannot reach you.’
The garment, because it can be worn, has one slightly longer Fair Isle sleeve than necessary, reaching out, ending into a knitted cuff with a thumb. The other sleeve, knitted in Amber coloured yarn in Aran patterns, crosses and plaits the stitches. This style of knit for this sleeve was chosen because of how I sometimes plait my hair. So, the indication is now that it is not clothes but craft or art. Most people who have commented on the Aran sleeve don’t like it – they cannot work with the idea that the sleeve is different to the Fair Isle patterning of the body and other sleeve. Me, I like it.
The Pattern of Life isn’t all perfectly matching or symmetrical or neat or predictable. So, changing the length of a sleeve, adding another style of knit to the other sleeve, working with patterns and motifs for about one thousand hours, has enabled me to Knit an evolving story. First, it was a wearable vest, then I ripped the arm ribs back to start sleeves. I don’t mind if I never wear this garment at all, and yet it is wearable, it is also showable as art, it is passable to be open to a discussion about clothes, knitting, women’s work, materiality – why we knit, why we make clothes, what becomes art, a concept, a thought and why we bother at all.
In my 60th year, I am figuring out what is the stage of my creative journey, today. I have a valuable story / experience to share – having an MA in knitting when I was 58, a Fine Art Degree at the age of 35, I’ve travelled across some of the largest countries in the world by train, to get to a tiny place in China. I’ve sailed across land and sea to live in Shetland. I knit but I am not a knitter. I can crochet and sew too. I’ve taught English, I’m a coach for apprentices at Uni, I have been a PA, a Contemporary Dance tour manager, and events manager, a gallery building manager – but none of this really matters and yet it all matters greatly because it has brought me to this point in my life – to figure out exactly what is the value of my creative practice and where do I want to take it?
I am not an emerging artist, I am firmly placed in an underrepresented demographic of an older Women still making conceptual art under the guise of a knitted project.
What I would like to do is engage with other women to knit this piece, as they feel fits them. I want everyone to use their own colours choices, yarn decisions, size of the project so that we may talk about the work of women.
I am really proud of being able to knit this ‘thing’ because, let’s be honest, I have been in a privileged position to do so but I haven’t always been so. I could not have knitted it when I returned to the city from living in Shetland, without home or job, crying on the kerb stones. My creative practice was far from my priority then – I needed stability – take Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, for example. When I returned from Shetland, didn’t even have the physiological needs – without home or sleep. Since that time, I have built myself back up and for now, I am around the esteem level with a subliminal eye on Self actualisation. I’ve also been here before and know that it is not a sure thing nor is it a prolonged state and I know where it goes after – that is down.
I think, what I am writing is that my jumper is not a jumper – it is an art piece about my feelings about my beautiful Sister and I cannot always reach her – which is why I have called it ‘I cannot reach you’ And, weirdly, to this end, I am thinking of knitting a 2nd jumper, in exactly the same way as the first but in different colours because when we were children, our mother dressed us in identical clothes for about 12 years ,when we were, and still are, like chalk and cheese.
For all the lovely people who have bought my Fair Isle pullover worksheet, would you like to join me in some kind of knit along. I will not be teaching you how to do your project but I would love to see your projects and hear what you are making. I think it will be wonderful to share what we are doing. I will be slow, I am not in a rush. I have many other things on the go including finishing this piece, I also have work and workshops and a crochet piece for my daughter and somewhere along the line, I would like to live a little – go see places
I am also thinking of ways to display this piece and have been in contact with The Head of Fine Art at SHU to see if we could show the piece and she had better ideas – so there are maybe a few things being mulled over. I want to show the piece because I would like to be back in the Fine Art arena because I want to go to Japan to do an artist residency and showing work is part of that process.
Have any of you read this far 😊 ?
Would any of you like to join me in a knit along so that you can knit your own pullover or use the charts to knit something for yourselves? leave a comment or join the group.
Do you have any thoughts on this whole thing? Positive or negative.
tracey doxey 