A Group Exhibition by Traverse 

Traverse is a group of five textile artists, based in a studio at The Old Print Works in Birmingham, who came together while studying Experimental Textiles in 2016 and began exhibiting the following year.

“The name ‘Traverse’ came from a sense of moving across, looking or stepping sideways, trying to find different perspectives as we approach a theme – we may not all move in the same direction or use the same mode of travel. Within mixed media and textile art, we each have our favourites, including working with paper, metal, hand-dyed fabric, felt, 3D and fashion, using heat, print, paint, and stitch.”

Their work has been inspired by themes including ‘Destinations’ - special places and the beauty of the natural world and ‘Revealed’ - exploring hidden layers in both the physical world and their work itself. Their current exhibition work on ‘Senses’ reflects their individual approaches to the sensory world, including exploring sensory loss, optical illusion and how sensory experiences can evoke memories of place and time.

“An important part of our ethos is to celebrate our diversity, share our various strengths and to grow together, working side by side. However, having recently lived through strange times in our world and working apart for over a year, we are celebrating coming together again to present this retrospective, which reflects not only work on our themes but also work produced alone, exploring loss, personal viewpoints and our emotional landscapes – together and apart.”

 #traversetextileart #debdaysewingroom (at The Old Print Works)

Meet the Artist and Demonstration Days
January 15^th and February 19^th 11am - 2pm
Join members of Traverse in the gallery to talk to them about their exhibition and see them demonstrating how they work.

Cath Tyler
My work as a teacher left little time to continue the dressmaking, knitting, crochet and embroidery which I enjoyed so much and it is only after retirement that I returned to creative activities and discovered a whole new textile art world.

Although I love words, songs and poetry, my work is usually inspired by images - things I have seen or places I have been. I make no attempt to recreate them literally, preferring to work with symbols, texture and, most significantly, with colour to create abstract images in a variety of media, sometimes including metal and paper, but mainly using an embellisher, needle-felting, hand and machine embroidery, felt, fabric, yarn and beads.

Deb Day
I am dressmaker and sewing teacher by day and a textile artist by night. I am particularly interested in combining these different aspects, using textile art to make ‘unwearable dresses’, using hand-dyed fabrics and threads and decorated with needle-felting and creative embroidery.

My work tends to develop quite organically and I might be inspired by a certain colour, texture or smell. I find it difficult to write about my work and describe what I do as it is usually a reflection of how I’m feeling, rather than what I’m thinking.

I guess I am what I am, what you see is what you get, and if you’re lucky, you never know, you might get a little more than you see.

Dia Martin
I have always liked being creative and enjoyed sewing, knitting and hand embroidery from a young age. Studying Art in the Netherlands, I loved to paint the surrounding landscape and my favourite places. My art teacher inspired me, introducing me to modern art and I particularly liked the work of Karel Appel, Piet Mondrian, Marc Chagall and Franz Marc.

After retirement, I have reconnected with this creativity and decided to investigate other media in the world of textile art, including fabric, felt, metal and recycled materials. I am still inspired by what I see and hear around me – landscapes and special places. My current work reflects my love for working with strong colours, shapes and abstract images, as well as my early interest in Modern Art.

Vicki Townsend-Gee
I explore and reconfigure imagery using science, biology and anatomy as a starting point for my ideas and development.

I look upon the human form as a building, a symbiosis of biology and micro architecture, subject to decay, structural damage and invisible change.

Frequently, the work I make is in response to how the body is mapped scientifically, treated medically and viewed culturally.

My work sometimes hints at a biological structure, molecular form, and explores the hidden disease and unknown fragility contained within us as living beings.

Janet Donnell

My approach to textile work is very much “What will happen if…?” I have a germ of an idea, then begin to explore materials and techniques to see what happens when various methods are combined and developed. I love to work with the soft luscious textures of wools and yarns, or the flamboyant brightness of silk, as well as sheer fabrics, paints and dyes, textured fibres, cottons, lace, beads, papers - or anything else that will add to a finished surface that is full of touchable texture.  Working with my sewing and embellishing machines, as well as a lot of hand stitches, something emerges. I find landscapes and maps, rivers and contours - and the finished piece of work is usually nothing like the idea I started out with….