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Bury Art Collective
A collective of creatives in Bury
Coreen Cottam
I am a Bury based artist who grew up in the Scottish Borders. With my hometown being a centre of woollen production, the language of textiles became my mother tongue. Talk of spinning, dying, weaving, darning and sewing surrounded me.In my work I use stitching both practically and in mark making. My pieces here explore the idea of noticing and honouring the small fragments we daily ignore or discard.
Ephemera GardenWorking with repurposed fabric and donated ephemera, I employed my favourite motif of circles to explores how stitches can be both functional and decorative. This garden idea reappears in a community textiles project I lead earlier this year. See Friendship Garden. (bottom of page)
Wire and ThreadWaiting for inspiration to land one morning, I noticed interesting arcs of wire escaping from the wastepaper bin in my workspace. My son had restrung his guitar and thrown away the broken strings.The springing tension of the wire curves contrasts well with the soft, draping nature of the fabric. With the stitching holding them in proximity, the combination of the two creates something with a new contained energy.
March 2018
Working with ephemera, I found myself wondering about these tiny fragments we disregard. Each one was designed, produced, bought, delivered, applied and used before being discarded. For the month of March, I catalogued these little pieces on a stitched calendar.
Contained
Learning how to manipulate fabric through folds and pleats brought me to create this piece. I used found fabrics and left over threads. Tantalisingly contained in the central fold is a piece of ephemera, held there as if it were precious and important.
Friendship Garden
With funding from Near Neighbours, I was able to deliver a short textiles project with a women’s group whose members come from many different countries. As if planting seeds, we each stitched a dark line to represent the soil. After that came the green shoots and stems. Despite not always sharing a common language we were able to communicate through sewing, we discovered we had stitches in common and were also able to teach each other new stitches. The real joy came when the flowers started to bloom, just as our friendship did.
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