February Meeting - Bridget Bernadette Karn

Our February speaker was Bridget Bernadette Karn. She is an artist working in wool, and is based in Acaster Malbis on the outskirts of York.

Bridget realised she was an artist at about the age of 4, but she took a rather convoluted route to become a felt maker. Her talk explained this journey, and then she talked about the feltmaking process, and how this

Bluebell Wood - Bridget Bernadette Karn
(image from her facebook page)

 is transformed into this

The Bluebell Wood - Bridget Bernadette Karn
(image taken from her facebook page)

She works mostly from photographs and looks for dramatic combinations of light and shade and then crops her images until she finds what she is looking for.

In 2016 her piece 'Frosted Woodland' was selected from over 12,000 entries to become one of the exhibited works at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. This was a major breakthrough, not only for her personally, but also for textile art in general. This was probably the first time that the Academy had accepted wool as a medium into their 'painting' galleries.

Frosted Woodland - Bridget Bernadette Karn
(image taken from her facebook page)

Bridget's website has a short video showing some of  the processes which went into making her submission for this year's Royal Academy exhibition. The piece is called Glorious in Defeat, and shows a ruined church surrounded by floods.

Glorious in Defeat - Bridget Bernadette Karn
(image taken from her facebook page)

Bridget also shared with us aspects of how she runs her business, and amongst other things stressed the importance of pricing her work at a realisitic level, and how social media plays a large part in getting an audience for her work.

The talk was very interesting, and this month, some of her work can be seen at Blossom Street Gallery in York, alongside work by branch member Carol Coleman, and four other textile artists.

In other things . . .

There was a plea for new committee members, and for members to take on some of the small administrative tasks that need doing - without the commitment of becoming full members of the committee.

Young Embroiderers' is meeting 22nd and 23rd February. For further details click here

Future dates

1st April  National Embroiderers' Guild AGM Information is on the Emboiderers' Guild website (you will need your membership log-in details to access this)

10th June Regional Day
14th-16th July Summer School at Bishop Burton