Sue Lancaster's Artistic Reflections of St Silas Church

Sketches and Watercolours of the carvings and windows. 2013

by textile artist Sue Lancaster

On 28th September 2013, we held an Open Day at the now closed St Silas Church on Broomhall Street. We invited local artists to come in to create inspirational works reflecting various elements of the church building.

Sheffield-based textile artist Sue Lancaster (www.stitchedupandfleeced.com) did these beautiful sketches and a watercolour of some of the St Silas stained glass window and wood carvings.

“As a Textile Artist I was looking for inspiration for elements to develop for use in my work. My main medium is machine embroidery but I use all sorts of other processes along with that, such as dyeing, printing and sometimes felt making. I can also machine embroider onto specialist fabrics which dissolve and leave my machine stitching as a lace. So when doing some visual research I am looking for interesting surfaces in terms of texture, colour schemes and also compositions. What I see, and record, may also lead towards certain techniques for interpretation. I might also develop designs by extracting only small parts of an image so that it becomes abstract and the viewer in the end will not know what my source of inspiration was unless I tell them. So, though the drawings from St Silas are at the moment very obviously from a church, they will get developed into a non-religious piece. I was particularly interested in the combination of cracked and worn plaster surfaces with the elegant wood carving, stone columns and bright stained glass windows. This suits my recent range of soft furnishings using tea and rust dyeing with over- printing in bright colours.”

Sue Lancaster designs and makes both decorative and functional textile pieces for sale and exhibition as well as teaching textile courses, including those accredited by City& Guilds, at her studio in Nethergreen.

Sue was one of the creative artists working with us in the Our Broomhall project school workshops, organising textile activities at Broomhall Infant School.

Also see artist Phil Lockwood’s St Silas sketches