Box Moor Trust, London Road, Hemel Hempstead, HP1 2RE
A wonderful conference day was had by all with speaker Tansy Hargan at Box Moor Trust, Hemel Hempstead on 14th October 2023. Tansy gave an interesting talk outlining her knowledge and early professional work. She is a multidisciplinary artist on architecture and landscape. She explores urban and rural places in her sketchbook making brisk marks and colour blocks simply to record experiences. Her creative textiles are deconstructed old garments and tailor’s waste. Staining, bleaching, scraping, scoring, slashing – and so much more including applying acrylic paints onto the fabrics and papers to collage her work. She layers, weaves and uses reverse applique. She also explores the use of fabric in landscape architecture for her designs.
ERTF members were asked to do some thumbnail sketches with colour using her viewfinders or clipboard. Negative shapes were recorded with notes added to each drawing. This way, we created a frame with space to stitch later. We all enjoyed this exercise going into the Boxmoor Trust garden finding inspiration.
After a light lunch we were then encouraged to use fabrics and papers to create our artwork. Using fabric scraps from Tansy or our own was such an inspiration and the day flowed well – time flew by. We appliqued design fabrics hand stitched layers and smaller fabrics from our sketches. Then we embroidered over the top layer. I decided to create a vessel with mine after free machining at home.
A truly inspirational day with thanks to Tansy, daughter Phoebe and the committee/Carole Nicholls for organising the conference.
Tansy has several on-line courses and a good shop on her website www.tansyhargan.com including her new course Floral Obscurer which explores the quirky and compulsive art of botanical. Her aim is to stimulate imagination whilst developing knowledge and application of flowers. I have signed up for this and am looking forward to it as a Christmas present!
Norah Stocker