Textile artist Lone Helliwell met poet Anne Dauber recently to discuss the format for the Olympic Textile Art Workshops.
Anne has supplied photographs of the barn and area that inspired her poem the Great Grey Barn.
Participants will be invited to use both these and words from the poem to inspire their own work.
Lone has set up a series of 2 hour sessions during which people will be invited to create 5″ squares using a variety of textile techniques.
The following dates are for workshops held at NeST gallery, 25 Newgate, Barnard Castle.
Tuesday 12th June 1.30 – 3.30p.m.
Friday 15th June 2 – 4p.m.
Friday 13th July 2 – 4p.m.
To book a place e-mail: judith@barnardcastlenest.org.uk or tel: 07413 101014
People wishing to submit textile squares without attending workshops can do so by sending them together with name, address and contact details to:
Judith Lesley Marshall, Winning Words Textile Installation, c/o NeST gallery, 25 Newgate, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham, DL12 8NG by Saturday 21st July 2012.
Remember to include brief information about the techniques used and the parts of the poem depicted in the square. All squares will be considered for inclusion in the final installation which will tour village halls and community spaces as of October 2012.
For those of you who missed the poem first time round, please read on:
The great grey barn where the cows once lived
lies empty now.
Straw abandoned like
an unmade bed,
the hollow which was, for those blackened months, their Winter womb
lies cold.
I passed your barn
every day and saw your bovine stare,
snug within the parameters of your stone house,
high pillows of dense packed snow.
Monochrome scene from the window,
hills creased by rocks
full stopping the landscape.
My eyes rest on the hush and linger.
Desolate, dank. Lie still. No rush.
But the Winter comes and goes, as it pleases.
High on the hills now
dawdling away the afternoon
their great backsides
sodden, slapped
with the soil from a sepia Winter
Your faces staring back through the grills on the broad gate
crushing the cud, your insolent eyes watching me shiver.
Now, I idly watch at you from my kitchen window
while you come to visit, calf in tow,
eyes wide with looking at
the machinery of my life
and all that I need, just to be able to eat.
While you chew in my face,
rubbing it in.
The nettles around your hooves flattened
as you tread between
the saucers of marsh marigold.
I am glad.
