Marcia Crookes - creative textiles workshops & textile artist

I’ve always known that art was what I wanted to do, as it was the only subject besides History and English that interested me. I could NOT do embroidery and in fact actually hated doing it at school!!! Luckily my mum was incredibly talented with her knitting and sewing. She used to make me clothes every whitsuntide and I remember they were all by hand - but I never had what she had then and instead concentrated on drawing.
Here is one of my earlier drawings that was used for the ‘Isis’
Bob Dylan fanzine cover…

I decided I wanted to do something that was art-based when I left school, so I went to Leeds College of Art from 1979 – 1982 doing art & display/theatre set design.
As part of the syllabus we did lots of life drawings and I also started working with colour and plant shapes, which I found I could simplify and use in my work using pattern and print. I did not realise at this point that I would return to my fascination with pattern and print some 20 years later.
Unfortunately I don’t have college images because I threw them all away very soon after leaving college - I really can’t believe I did that! I obviously thought what I had done was not worthy of keeping - but anyway, below is an early ‘doodle’ I found on a scrap of paper from one of my sketchbooks that I thought still looked quite modern and I’m sure I can use again one day to make an amazing quilt, now I know how to!

After leaving college, I did some voluntary work for the Leeds Playhouse, working on some of their sets helping to produce back-drops and I also worked for a graphic design company in Leeds making hand-cut signs for supermarkets, which developed my skill with a scalpel and once again it was something I returned to years later, to help me produce accurately cut printing blocks and appliquéd shapes in my current work.

After my art college days I then spent the next years working at HMV (1 year) and Virgin retail (9 years) in Leeds, which I really liked because I just absoloutely love music (see myspace for this side of me!) and I could not find a job in the areas of art that I wanted to work in.
Virgin retail was the best thing that ever happened to me because it was here that I met my husband Richard, who is an artist ( Click here …), who whisked me off to live in France for 2 years and it was there that I began to see the benefits of sewing…

Whilst living in Narbonne in Southern France, I often visited the outdoor market that sold beautiful and cheap fabrics from Morocco. I used to buy lots of smaller pieces of the fabrics as I couldn’t afford big pieces and I couldn’t decide which I preferred.
I used to piece together these wonderful fabrics by using an old Singer machine given to me by an aunt and some of the fabrics were plain, so I if I was making a lrger item I used to do simple potato prints to bring the overall design together.
Friends started to ask me to make them throws and quilts for their sofas and beds and eventually, by word of mouth I started to make items for other people.
These quilts contained large simple geometric shapes and the quilting by hand was very basic…

When I returned from France with Richard, we lived with my parents for about a year, which was really good of them because we took over the house!
We really did need more space, so we decided to move to Skipton, (which was between both sets of parents) in 1995 and it was very soon after moving here that Richard told me about a “wonderful exhibition” of ‘City & Guilds embroidery, patchwork & quilting’ that was on display in the town.
I visited the exhibition and decide straight away to enroll as I wanted to know more about how to do the things I had been teaching myself in France.
Whilst living in Skipton and going to college, I worked for a few years at the Edinburgh fringe festival (each summer) and the ‘Corn Exchange’ in Leeds (each christmas) selling cats, bags, quilts and paintings.
EDINBURGH FRINGE (about 1995). The stand was on the street,
so we had a huge umbrella attached to the top!
You can see some of my early bags…
LEEDS CORN EXCHANGE (about 1995).
This is a close-up of some of the cats I made…

SAMLESBURY HALL 1995 (Nr Preston).
I exhibited here with Richard. In the background (to fill the spaces!) are two wall hangings that were borrowed commissions - very specific works, one was poppies and one was to do with chess…

During the City & Guilds course (1995-1999) I produced pieces that all contained plants, insects, people or cats. (See ‘my old city & guilds pieces’ section for some of the images I managed to remember to photograph!)
In the final year of my C&G in 1999 I entered the Charles Henry Foyle trust competition at The Forge Mill needle museum. I was a finalist there and was invited to exhibit a piece I made called ‘Mendels peas’, which was about genetic engineering…

During the C&G course I realised that lots of people were asking me “how have you done that?” They were actually asking ME, who was useless at sewing at school!
I couldn’t believe people were interested in what I did, so as a result of this and as I was not working at the time, I decided to go to night class for two years to gain a teaching qualification so that I could properly share my ideas in the future.

So folks, this is how I started my career in textiles and I feel ashamed that I never had the love of embroidery when I was a child, that I have today!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS