about terry
My textile practice centres around Lyme Regis and the Jurassic coast in Dorset. Through my work I endeavour to depict the beauty and fragility of this environment, looking for ways to help people connect more deeply with the coastal landscape. My focus is the apparent tension between the needs of people and the natural processes that shape the coastline.
Walking on sections of the SW Coast Path is my starting point, offering a way to experience the place in different seasons and weathers, observe changes, record details and note the passage of time. Textures and marks observed in the landscape inform print and stitch. Hand-made nets allude to the tension between our need to control the coastal environment and our essential interconnectedness with the natural world, linking back to the traditional skills and industries of this coast.
I dye and print my fabrics, originally using Procion dyes, rust and found objects. Recently I have researched local, hand processed earth pigments as a link to place, finding the geology and the associated coastal processes fascinating. These cliffs have become my colour palette: local sandstones, chalk, lias and greensand range in colour from soft pink, ochre and white to grey-green and dark bluish-grey, offering new avenues for colouring cloth.
Walking on sections of the SW Coast Path is my starting point, offering a way to experience the place in different seasons and weathers, observe changes, record details and note the passage of time. Textures and marks observed in the landscape inform print and stitch. Hand-made nets allude to the tension between our need to control the coastal environment and our essential interconnectedness with the natural world, linking back to the traditional skills and industries of this coast.
I dye and print my fabrics, originally using Procion dyes, rust and found objects. Recently I have researched local, hand processed earth pigments as a link to place, finding the geology and the associated coastal processes fascinating. These cliffs have become my colour palette: local sandstones, chalk, lias and greensand range in colour from soft pink, ochre and white to grey-green and dark bluish-grey, offering new avenues for colouring cloth.
EDGE: Unseen Forces
With a concern for the coastal environment, recently Terry has begun to investigate the various forces which shape our fragile coastline. Shifting and changing constantly with the tides, after a storm everything is different, unrecognisable. Pebbles are arranged and rearranged through the action of the waves. A whole beach can be built and destroyed in a season and she is fascinated by this.
Her work for EDGE considered longshore drift, particularly the action of waves which formed and maintain Chesil Beach. Terry's process reflects this: the slow rhythmic hand stitching is meditative and echoes the ceaseless ebb and flow of the waves, whilst the subsequent unpredictability of painting and dyeing totally transforms the work.
Her work for EDGE considered longshore drift, particularly the action of waves which formed and maintain Chesil Beach. Terry's process reflects this: the slow rhythmic hand stitching is meditative and echoes the ceaseless ebb and flow of the waves, whilst the subsequent unpredictability of painting and dyeing totally transforms the work.