Coming to the Swanson Gallery this week (14th October 2011) is an exhibition of three outstanding craft makers who live and work in the Highlands. Four makers were selected for Making Progress, the craft mentoring and business support scheme for mid career makers run by HI-Arts. The four makers created solo exhibitions of their work, which showed individually at Inverness Museum & Art Gallery throughout the summer. Three of the exhibitions have now come together in this group touring exhibition, along with the work of one of the two mentors, Deirdre Nelson. The fourth maker, Nick Ross, currently has an exhibition in Berlin and is unable to take part in the group show.

The makers are Patricia Niemann from Latheron in Caithness, Nick Ross from Inverness, Caroline Dear from Skye and Jennifer Cantwell from Forres.

Since November 2010 the four makers have worked with their mentors, Deirdre Neilson and Gilly Langton as well as HI-Arts Craft Development Coordinator, Pamela Conacher and the Highlife Highland Exhibitions Unit to develop their creative skills and business to a new level. They have also been supported by a partnership with Screen HI to create short films for the project with filmmaker and Director, Catherine Weir.

Patricia Niemann is a German-trained goldsmith and designer with a master’s degree from Edinburgh College of Art in glass. Since 2003 she has been based in a studio based in the wilds of Caithness, where she primarily makes contemporary fine jewellery. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and works free-lance as designer and as an instructor at North Lands Creative Glass. However, most of her recent work is informed by her experience of the Far North of Scotland, with its wilderness, wide open spaces, the deteriorating and forming effects of the harsh weather and the clean air – and local funeral archaeology. She is most interested in all forms of body adornment, especially objects that change the silhouette of the wearer. In her practice, much of her work develops through drawing. Materials used are precious metals, hot glass (blown and hot sculpted), textiles and found objects.

Caroline Dear is interested in the natural world and how we relate to it. She likes to encourage a fresh engagement with specific aspects of the natural world, recently with particular plants. Her work results from research into the specific subject and the particular place, with the final piece or pieces being a process of distillation of the many disciplines of information gathered. Living on the Isle of Skye since 1986 when she moved there from France she has developed her practice using skills learnt over the years. Her initial training was as an architect and this has been helpful with strategies for developing work, making 3D work and with making work for specific locations. In this exhibition she has been given the freedom to develop a new body of work based around the traditional skills of making ropes by hand, something which has fascinated her for a number of years. This has allowed her to expand her plant working vocabulary, explore practical issues of conservation and examine new ways to exhibit fragile plant material.

Jennifer Cantwell lives and works in Forres, Moray. For this exhibition she has been working with knitting, sound processing software and mobile phone technology to create a series of installations incorporating birdboxes. The patterns on the birdboxes are based on the soundfiles of birdsongs and ambient sound recorded in specific locations. The work looks at issues of immigration, emigration, identity and belonging. She worked with sound designer Dave Martin to record a sonic snapshot of each area. She develops the idea of visually branding an area by taking something ambient and completely natural from it ie birdsong and analyzing it and turning it into a product using mechanisation and technology, then presenting it as a physical object, a sound piece and a geotagged link to an online visual + audio map via a barcode and a smartphone, taking the exhibition out of the gallery and into the virtual world.

Craft Spotlights have been funded by HI-Arts, Creative Scotland and the Highland Council

The exhibition runs at the Swanson Gallery, Thurso Library from 14th October – 5th November 2011 before moving to the St Fergus Gallery, Wick Library from 19th November until the end of the year.

Links:

Patricia Niemann: http://www.patbat.com/
Caroline Dear: http://carolinedear.robertarnold.co.uk/ 
Jennifer Cantwell: http://jennifercantwell.co.uk/
Nick Ross: http://nckrss.com/

Source: Inverness Museum & Art Gallery