Artist in Residence

lion dance

ISF ACADEMY secondary School

In September 2021, I was invited to be the artist-in-residence at ISF Academy Secondary. I conducted mixed-media textile based workshops with the students and staff, as well as working on a special giant cross-stitch artwork for the school.

I created a square wooden frame, inset with a wire mesh panel, onto which coloured cord was interwoven to create a dancing lion head.

In Chinese culture, the lion symbolises power, wisdom, and superiority. People perform lion dances at Chinese celebrations, as well as traditional weddings, festivals, new business openings, and other joyous occasions to bring good fortune and chase away evil spirits. The lion dance is one of the most important traditions at Chinese New Year. It is performed to bring prosperity and good luck for the upcoming year.

A huge thank you to all of the teachers from the Secondary School Art Department for their kind support and encouragement during my time at ISF Academy.

You can see how the design developed daily over the course of the two week residency, with help from the grade 11-12 students.

Here are the finished results!

student workshops

As well as creating a piece of rope-art for the school, I also conducted a series of workshops with the students and teachers. Over the two week period I worked with 70 art students across Grades 9-12 (ages 14-18), leading them on a fun exploration of embroidery. Up to 5 workshops were allocated per class.

For our first activity, we created basic radial, spectrum and rotational geometric embroidery designs on a black surface. The aim was to experiment with the different possible outcomes based on the selection of colour and line sequence, guided by the placement of specific holes. This was a great way of establishing the foundational skills of embroidery and demonstrating how it can be applied in a less conventional way.

The students thoroughly enjoyed this activity. I’m always amazed with and love how different the results can turn out from each students work. I am grateful that students continue to show me new combinations and ideas to apply each time I run this workshop.

This then led us onto applying geometric embroidery patterns onto printed images. The students were asked to think about how they could apply the embroidery stitches which they had learnt in order to complement or contrast with their photographic image. I wanted to emphasise the importance of “playing” throughout this whole programme. There is no right and wrong answer. I wanted to encourage the students not to focus on a perfect outcome, but to experiment, have fun and see what happens. The more weird and wonderful the better!

We experimented with mixed media; first preparing the fabric base by using watercolour pencils, fabric painting on cotton canvas and then applying a photographic image transfer using black/white photocopies of photographs students had taken or sourced themselves. The various embroidery stitches could be applied to enhance a detail that already existed in the photograph or they could invent something dreamlike or of complete fantasy. I am absolutely delighted with the results and love how differently they all turned out. I am so proud of all of their hard work.

Here are some of the pieces created by the students.