Flavours Exhibition

“FLAVOURS”

The Atkinson, Lord Street, Southport PR8 1DB 7th August - 4th September 2021 www.theatkinson.co.uk

Experienced textile artist, Carole Dawber, has been stitching the midnight oil away preparing for her forthcoming exhibition at The Atkinson in Southport.

Although Carole experiments across many different mediums and artistic styles, she is best known for her authentic and detailed stitch portrayals of garden flowers. The honesty of her rendition is testament to her perseverance to generate fabric renditions of nature.

Carole comments that her exhibited stitch pieces will form part of her ‘Bouquet in a Vase Series’ of embroideries that revisit the joy of an unexpected gift or the insight that flowers endow on the recipient. The fragility of reclaimed Sari Silks have been skilfully manipulated to capture the fleeting beauty of heady bouquets of flowers that all too often quickly fade. The colour and freshness of these blooms is inherent in Carole’s reinvention through mediums of hand dyed, reclaimed Sari Silk and expressive hand stitch.

A graduate of the celebrated Liverpool Art School (now Liverpool John Moores University) from the 1970’s - a time when John Lennon’s autograph was still in evidence on the Lecture Theatre desks – Carole describes her time studying in Liverpool as ‘magical’.

“All I did all day was draw and paint, work with fabric, design clothes, and create by taking risks and having fun. The most inspiring artists, tutors and musicians surrounded me. It was awesome. There were no limits to imagination. I met such amazing people, all of whom just loved creativity for the idea of invention.”

During the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, Carole’s research into fabric dying from natural sources while still a student at Liverpool, earned her the accolade of being awarded a lifetime Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. Carole’s degree garment collection at Liverpool was subsequently put on display in London at Dickens and Jones store in Regent Street and was applauded by fashion editor, Prudence Glynn, in a TIMES’ editorial. However, she confesses that her lasting memory will always be selling knitwear samples at the subsequent ‘INDIGO’ trade fair in Paris to none other than Yves Saint Laurent Couture. “I loved every minute of it!”

Attention to colour has always played a vital role in Carole’s design ethic.

“I love the alchemy of colouring cloth through dye. Even before undertaking my journey through Art School I learned to stencil and print images on my own clothes. Using my mum’s twin tub washing machine (causing a myriad of tints in the weekly white washing load!) I experimented with very rudimentary tie-dye techniques. The Aladdin’s cave that the Dye Lab opened up at the Art School was just further encouragement in my need to colourise fabrics for my art practice. The training I received in mixing commercial dyes, and extracting and experimenting with natural dye stuffs, has lead to a life long passion of transforming yarn and fabric into jewel-like colours.”

As a freelance fabric designer during the 80’s, Carole regularly exhibited at trade fairs in Europe. “Dying my own yarns rekindled my www.lancmag.com

love for the inner glow that Acid Dyes brings to wool and silk fibres. The luminosity in the shades of colour that emerges within the fibres is so intense that it often takes my breath away. Often in a week of dying I would become addicted to what would emerge from the next dye test. It was at this point that I finally let go of the rulebook and allowed instinct and, perhaps experience, take over.”

Twenty years later, Carole, has now thrown off the commercial demands of industry and believes she has discovered her ‘own’ artistic voice that allows her to unrestrictedly articulate her personal concepts and ideas.

“Composition and content have been a struggle because design training focuses on pattern, rhythm and repeat rather than allowing a single unified image the indulgence of its own space. In developing ideas I usually work within linking themes. Often they overlap, or emerge from previous stimuli, that I have exploited throughout my creative journey.”

Carole is amused she has retained the imagination and ability to dream from childhood and frequently wonders what she will do when she grows up.

“Sometimes I forget how thread and needle has become like pen and ink to me. My earliest memories revolve around my Nana teaching me to crochet using just my fingers and then showing me how to peg a rag-rug using real ‘dolly’ clothes pegs. I treat thread and yarn as familiar companions often using the rhythm of stitch as a mind sanctuary to daily worries. It has been my companion for so long I often forget its importance to my creative practice.”

Acknowledging the pivotal role that flowers have played in the history of textile design, Carole feels she has charted her own course.

“My floral textile pieces over the past few years have developed from simplified graphic depictions of garden and flower forms to more emotive still life captures of colour, form and expression. I love the variety of colour that flowers offer together with their uniqueness of form, petal structure and leaf. It is often too easy to generalise about a flower often resulting in a cliché, childlike representation. When interpreting a flower form I undertake an almost a forensic approach. Does the flower have 5 or 6 petals; are there additional inner forms; what shape is the leaf; what is the bud like?”

Carole relies on her meticulously chronicled journals as support for her later reinventions.

“I like to draw from life or photograph the various positions that the flower head can be viewed as I find this adds dynamic to my portrayal. Recording all of this as sketches, notes and now digitally, I am also subconsciously thinking how the increased visual depth created with thread can be added through hand stitch forms.”

Carole has constructively responded to the challenges forced by the recent lockdown on all practicing artists.

“During this time of enforced reflection I have revisited my artistic

journey over the last two decades resulting in a re-examination of the subjects and influences of earlier work. After a hesitant approach, and often disappointing result of the depiction of cut flowers, I resorted to previous methods of silk cut appliqué. Time and experience resulted in a more confident and critical approach to my interpretations. Certainly I have used more consideration about placement and composition in the overall image.” Explaining her current ‘Bouquet’ series, Carole’s clear-cut procedure remains crucial to achieving the required result. “In this series I have revisited silk fabric appliqué technics to express the exuberance of the cut blooms. Each flower is created using hand dyed, reclaimed Sari Silk, which is hand cut into individual petal and leaf forms, before being bonded together using transfer adhesive. These are then assembled into individual floral stems that are used in a similar way to any cut bloom is traditionally arranged in a vase. Once the whole composition is complete hand stitching is used to enhance and anchor both silk blooms and silk backgrounds.” Carole sums up her ‘Bouquet’ journey as providing a unique opportunity of “re-looking at the world I inhabit and how I wanted to capture nature in stitch.” Naturally, all of this revolved around exploiting colour this time assisted by an increased understanding, that Carole admits, was the result of “a new garden that allowed me a new, if unruly palette, for creativity.” LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE 167