Threads of Inspiration
Contemporary textiles by the Rubicon Textile Artists

17 May – 20 July 2003

Treasures in the Art Gallery & Museum’s collection evolve into threaded creations.

The Rubicon Textile Artists were invited to choose any object on display in the Art Gallery & Museum and to create a work of art. The artists are Esther Devereaux, Jan Evans, Valerie Gilmer, Shelagh Powys, Kathleen Hollands, Angie Hughes, Gill Potter and Marie-Claire Szczepanik. All the artists work in different ways some taking the art to its extreme, others working in more traditional ways.

Jan Evans chose a 4,000 year old beaker discovered as part of a burial at Barnwood. She says, ‘I was originally attracted to its colour, and I was drawn to the pattern and inspired by the way its maker had simply decorated the pot’s surface’.

Marie-Claire Szczpanik has worked from CR Ashbee’s piano in the Arts & Crafts Gallery. ‘I was inspired by the sheer beauty of the delicately worked panels on this musical instrument.'

Stanley Spencer’s painting Village Gossip was the starting point for Kathleen Hollands, the personal elements behind the picture caught her imagination. ‘In his paintings he frequently included his friends, observing them going about their everyday tasks.’

Relief motifs on an eighteenth-century plate, the famous Dixton paintings, a candlesconce by the Arts & Crafts designer Ernest Gimson, leather panels by CR Ashbee and a Nativity piece by Eric Gill were selected by the other artists.

The exhibition demonstrates the Art Gallery & Museum’s commitment to working with local groups in Cheltenham and showing contemporary art.

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