Julie Arkell Workshop at Hope & Elvis - Part 1

Julie Arkell

I have been enjoying a number of workshops at Hope & Elvis this year but the highlight was definitely the Julie Arkell workshop.  I love Julie's work.  Julie is a textile and mixed media artist who creates whimsical folk art inspired scenes.  Her creations are made from papier-mâché and have knitted and handstitched garments or features and are embellished with handstitched phrases.  She also makes textile brooches...
 

Julie Arkell brooches

Julie's exhibition, "Away, Away", is currently on at the Harley Gallery, very close to the Hope & Elvis workshop.   So, we started our first day with a visit to the exhibition.  You can read about the exhibition here.

I am lucky enough to have been on one of Julie's courses before at Loop in London.  You can read about it here.   There we were dressing one of her creatures.  On this course we were making them too! 

Raw materials for the papier-mâché creatures

My first figure begins to take shape

Branching out into other figures

  
All round the room lots of creatures were emerging...
 

And by the end of the day we had lots of creatures drying out following a first layer of papier-mâché...

To give our creations more time to dry out we went to visit the Hemswell Antiques Centre on our second day which was quite a treat!  There we searched for treasure for our creatures from books with interesting papers for the final surface, to fabrics, to ephemera.  We all had a great time. 

 

End of day 2

By the end of day two we had our final layer of papier-mâché on the creatures ready for them to dry overnight.

Day 3 was painting day.  It was time to add some features and begin making clothes. 

Somebody's Hero

One of the great things about Hope & Elvis is that everything is provided so there were lots of materials to choose from...

and there's always something fascinating around the place that you haven't spotted before...

Some of the talented makers in our midst were kind enough to bring in a selection of their work to share with us...

Annette Emms - Tiny shoes and other lovely pieces

Simona Hill's Needle Lace

We worked hard and by the close of day 4 it was time for show & tell but I think I'll leave that for another day ...