Emily Tull: From conception to creation

The delicate but haunting imagery in Emily Tull’s portraits expertly depicts the fragility of life. Layers of fine fabric are embroidered over with a worn, frayed effect of sketchy stitching.

Her work “A Conversation with Death” was inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, intertwined with the personal story of the portrait sitter. The subject matter guided her in the select of dark and sumptuous fabrics to layer up the piece.

She is obsessed with faces and how they show the passing of time, keen on showing the fragility of flesh through her thread colour choices and stitching. From her use of fabric layering and stitched mark-making, her work grows into semi-abstract faces with a sense of mystery hidden behind.

Emily Tull won the Visual Arts (Non-Digital) section of the Kent Creative Awards in 2017. She is a co-founder of the Society for Embroidered Work, which promotes contemporary stitch artists. She was a contestant on Sky Arts Portrait Of The Year (2014) and a finalist in the Winter Pride Art Awards (2016). She exhibits across the UK and internationally including at the Mall Galleries (2018), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2014) and the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize Exhibition (2015).

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Alicja Kozlowska: Pop Art and Stitch

Artist Alicja Kozlowska is not only on a mission to bring Pop Art back to today’s art scene. She’s also taking Pop Art to new levels through her use of stitch.

Alicja is a devout fan of Andy Warhol. And she’s dedicated to resurrecting his messages against mass production and levels of consumerism that still exist today. Like Warhol, she uses commercial branding as her subject and elevates the everyday images with which we are bombarded through hand and machine embroidery.

She also takes her work to the masses in quite surprising ways. Don’t miss reading about her ‘performances’ in shopping malls, museums, and even an opera house.

Alicja creates and lives in Poland. She has numerous publications in handicrafts magazines and book illustrations. Her work can currently be seen at the LAM Museum in the Netherlands (where all works relate to food or consumption). She also participated in a collective exhibition in Warsaw this past October called “ART 6.” And she is currently featured in the collective exhibition “Pop Art Award” at the M.A.D.S. gallery in Milan.

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'Priceless' jewels snatched from German state museum

Robbers made off with priceless 18th century jewellery from a state museum in Dresden on Monday, police and museum directors said, in a major art heist that has shocked Germany. The thieves at dawn broke into the Green Vault at Dresden’s Royal Palace — home to around 4,000 precious objects of ivory, gold, silver and jewels — after a power cut deactivated the alarm. The stolen items included brilliant-cut diamonds that belonged to a collection of jewellery of 18th-century Saxony ruler Augustus the Strong. Museum directors had earlier feared much of three sets of diamond jewellery in the collection were snatched, but the loss turned out to be more limited than thought. “The criminals didn’t manage to take everything,” the director of Dresden’s state art collections Marion Ackermann told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday evening.

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Lion cub mummies feature in huge ancient Egypt find

Egypt on Saturday unveiled a cache of 75 wooden and bronze statues and five lion cub mummies decorated with hieroglyphics at the Saqqara necropolis near the Giza pyramids in Cairo. Mummified cats, cobras and crocodiles and scarabs were also unearthed among the well-preserved mummies and other objects discovered recently. The Antiquities Ministry announced the find at the foot of the Bastet Temple, dedicated to the worship of cats among ancient Egyptians, in the vast necropolis. Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Enany described the discovery as “a (whole) museum by itself”. He said initial archaeological studies showed that five of the mummies are lion cubs. Other artifacts uncovered in the dig included statues of an Apis bull, a mongoose, an ibis, a falcon and the ancient Egyptian god Anubis in animal form. The artifacts belong to the 26th Dynasty which dates back to the seventh century BC, Enany said.

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Jane Sanders: Rock ‘n’ Roll Applique!

How does a music loving textile artist choose between her two obsessions? She doesn’t – she combines them!

That was the no-brainer for Jane Sanders of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. Using machine and hand stitch, she creates pictures of iconic musicians on her vintage sewing machine, inspired by her own love of pop culture and the audiences’ love of their musical heroes. She employs techniques such as applique, beading and painting as part of her textile art.

Having been brought up with her mother’s Singer Fashion Mate sewing machine in the 1970s, Jane acquired one herself and has been using it for over 25 years. She sews at her kitchen table which inspired her social media name – stitchin in the kitchen.

Jane started her art training at The Salisbury College of Art and Design, and completed it with a degree in Contemporary Arts Practice from Northumbria University. Her work has been included in many group shows, and she has also had two solo shows in the North East. She has had portraits commissioned all over the world, and they have featured widely in the media.

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