CQ West: Unfolding Stories 3

JUDY STEPHENS
www.contemporaryquilterswest.org
I work with fabric, stitch and mixed media
collage, trying to capture the energy of a
feeling or an idea. It may be concern at
plastics polluting the ocean or pleasure in
a particular collision of colours and marks.
Bold, graphic imagery often including
heads and text appeals to me. This harks
back to my working life as a newspaper
journalist and the daily barrage of
headlines, stories and photographs. It also
links with a centuries-old tradition of
abstract quilt design often in red, black
and white.
My output has evolved over the years from
craft to something angrier. I made a series
of fabric collages about the destruction of
a large council housing estate with
desirable sea views, taking hundreds of
photographs of the derelict drug-graffitied
site. A quilt about bees, catchily titled ‘Ban
Neo-nicotinoids’ joined the fight against
the use of pesticides which kill bees.
Another series of quilts features the
scrawled words ‘There is no safety net’
which have, sadly, gathered more
resonance as time goes by.
‘Scrawling’ is not something that can be
done easily in fabric. I put many hours into
making something look as though it was
scribbled in a moment. In search of some
instant gratification my repertoire of marks
now includes paint.
I am keen to take textiles into the wider art
world. My work has been hung in the
annual Open Exhibition at the Royal West
of England Academy, Bristol, Bath Society
of Artists Annual Open at the Victoria Art
Gallery, Bath and was shortlisted in 2017 for
the Summer Exhibition at the Royal
Academy. It will be included in an
exhibition at the Penwith Gallery, St Ives, in
2018.