During August, for the third year running at an talla solais, Jan Kilpatrick (also known as Wild Tiles and Textiles) ran a week-long course called Textile Illuminations. This was well-attended, with a range of students, local and from further afield, including a 16 year old high school pupil with a strong interest in textiles, a professional weaver, an Edinburgh journalist specialising in writing for textile magazines and a textile artist from Yorkshire who was looking to spark some new ideas for her own practice.
They were a cheerful group, which was just as well given the torrential rain and strong winds that dominated the first half of the week. Instead of being able to hang our beautifully-dyed batik cloths outside in the Ullapool sunshine, we had to make do with dripping lines criss-crossing the workspace inside an talla solais! Since the cloth needed to dry between each new dye application, the weather really slowed us down. However, everyone took turns to dry pieces of work in front of the heaters and, with a little perseverance, by the end of day two, we found that we were back on track -and the work looked none the worse for the earlier dramas: in fact it looked magnificent!
As the week progressed, the Batik and hand-printed cloths were cut up and re-arranged using a variety of patchwork and applique techniques, embroidered by hand and by machine, then embellished with a wide range of recycled buttons, beads and bits and bobs from the forest floor and the shoreline. By the last day, the plain cotton canvasses of day one had been transformed into unique and beautifully-illuminated textile art, in the forms of books, wall-hangings and cushion-covers. This course allows each student, no matter their level of experience, to create work that is highly-developed and distinctly individual and since I'm sure there are many more aspiring textile artists out there, I plan to run this course again at an talla solais next year.
In the meantime, I suspect that there are a number of local people who cannot commit to a full week or even weekend of textile work, so I propose running a series of six evening classes providing an introduction to creative embroidery techniques (late January - March 2008). This would be closely followed by a weekend making embroidered textile journals, which may attract the same participants or attract a mixture of old and new students.
I have already planned many of my workshops for 2008 and so later on next year will be running two creative writing/book-making weekends ('Words from the Wood' and 'See Sound, Seashore') in Ullapool and a week called 'Rags to Riches', covering all sorts of crafts from recycled scrap materials. Hopefully these will all run from an talla solais! For more details go to: www.wildtiles.co.uk
Our Group Exhibition held in August this year, was by 3 artists who have graduated from Scottish colleges in the last few years.
Tonya McMullan and Sandy Christie, both from Edinburgh Art College, and both newcomers to exhibiting with us, and Pamela Tait, graduate from Gray's School of Art,
who has shown work with us before in several mixed shows.
We hope we will have the opportunity to show further artwork by these emerging artists. We consider it an important part of our activities, that we support students graduating from art colleges, by promoting their work.
Charlotte Watters, (former Ullapool High School pupil) brought her final show of work north to exhibit it in an talla solais after completing her M.F.A. in Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art, this year.
It was a beautiful exhibition of contemporary and conceptual work. Her book, 'Bewilderness Hardware', while not a catalogue to the show, deals with the same theme. It is available at present in the Ceilidh Place Book Shop in Ullapool and The Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh.
Triangle Arts Trust, Three Islands Workshops, Tanera Mhor, June 2007
an talla solais was priviledged to be involved with the Tanera Project which took place in June.
We were delighted to present some of that wotk in the gallery space for a week after the Tanera Residency finished, and while some work did not, and could not transpose from the island, it was well documented and shown on DVD in the gallery.
Visitors to an talla solais enjoyed the show, especially those who had already been to Tanera on the Open Day. It wqas particularly interesting for them to see the work again in formal surroundings. These visitors represented the larger part of our visitor numbers and it reflects well on their experience of going to the island when the artists were present, and being able to speak to them directly.
As part of our involvement with the project, an talla solais part funded a workshop with Ullapool High School pupils, to tie in with the International artists. Steven Skrynka, from Glasgow was tutor with the school pupils on a film project titled, 'My Idea of Heaven'. Two art teachers from the High School, Lesley Strachan and Rachel Wylie, accompanied the pupils. The students seemed enthusiastic about the whole experience. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of it, was that International connection, which was a close contact in an area where there is not a lot of visual art experience of this sort.
Best wishes to the next The Three Islands Workshops when they take place on Hoy, Orkney and North Uist in the following seasons.
an Talla solais Members' Show, 'Visual Energy' 25th March - 15th April 2007
This was our first exhibition this year.
Artists submitting work = 38
Pieces of works submitted = 90
Pieces of work hung = 90
Visitors over 2 weeks of exhibition = 410
Pieces of work sold = 6
Commission takes = £196.80
