Mary Taylor...... Farfield Mill

During the summer whilst on holiday in the Lake District, I visited Farfield Mill in Sedgwick. It is an arts and heritage centre, and it has an number of galleries there. There is also a number of studios there with artists working in residence. These artists often hold workshops and talks, whilst working and selling their work in the gallery shop. Whilst visiting the centre I came across textile artist Mary Taylor and noticed that her work had similarities to mine. I recently contacted Mary Taylor and asked her for some information about how she got set up at the mill, and how easy she finds it selling her work. I also asked her about her technique, unfortunately as she has worked and developed her technique for a long time she wanted to keep it to herself. This was her reply,

Hi Louisa,

I've been in my studio at Farfield for three and a half years, but for 18months before that I was in a shared studio at the Mill, with the craft cooperative I was a member of. That made me realise how much I enjoyed the interaction with the public and being able to sell my own work was an enormous bonus. But I found I was getting frustrated by not being able to be in control of the space and not being able to 'man' the studio as often as I'd have liked. So when my present studio became available I asked about the posiibility of taking it for myself. I was told by the then manager, that although there were 3 others interested in it, he would happily let me have it, provided I could make a decision in 24hours! In retrospect it was definately the right decision. Though the last couple of years have been very hard because of the economic situation. I do sell well, but I'm not sure I could manage without my husband earning a decent salary!

At the time I started at the Mill, studios were hard to come by, but sadly at the moment, there are several empty studios on level 4, though none on level 3 where I am. The studios up on level 4 are smaller and not as popular as fewer visitors tend to go up there.

The studio rent is worked out by the square metre. Mine is just under £100 a month. People say they are cheap, but if you take into account the remoteness of the Mill and the necessity for a car, and the lack of visitors throughout the year, I don't think they are particularly cheap. In addition we have to have 3rd Party Insurance, pay small business rates (about £130 a year), and we pay for the electricity used.

I love working there. I feel part of a community as opposed to working alone at home which I used to do. I am unusual in that I really enjoy talking to the public while I work. (Several of the Resident Artists don't feel like this.) But the biggest bonus is being able to sell my work without having to trail around galleries trying to persuade them to take textile art! Having said that I do have work at other galleries as well, but I sell far more at Farfield. Textile art is still not considered to be up there with 'painting' which is very frustrating. It's far harder to achieve high prices, which is one of the reasons that selling in galleries is so difficult because many charge such a high commission rate. At Farfield, as a Resident Artist, I pay just over 20% commission for sales which are handled by the Mill, including credit card transactions when I actually handled (and worked very hard for!) the sale! We all love customers who still carry a cheque book around with them; or cash! I'm not fussy. And I have been paid as much as £200 in cash over the years!

As far as my work is concerned I am sure you will appreciate that as I spent a long time developing the technique I use to create my work, I'm not prepared to tell you exactly how I do it! Sorry.

Good luck with your degree course, and getting started. I won't pretend that it is easy!

Kind regards

Mary Taylor

New Project

For my new self directed project I am looking at surfaces in nature and in architecture. When I think of nature I think of trees, leaves, flowers, organic forms. I love the marks that nature creates, tree bark, the veins on unusual leaves, the shapes of shells. The reason I love all these things is because, they are created totally on their own, by the earth. Not necessarily by accident because all of these things serve a purpose. Take a fossil for example, the marks will have taken thousands and thousands of years to develop and to me, that fact alone is amazing.The same thing applies to why I am attracted to buildings. I absolutely love how a building looks when it is so old and derelict. The decaying of the stone and the brick create such fabulous marks and textures that I could stand and look at it for hours. Again it is the idea that this will have taken time to happen the same as a fossil takes time to develop. At one time the building will have been brand new, clean bricks and stones will have been used, but over time this disintegrates and becomes so different visually.

For my outcomes I am wanting to explore fabric manipulation, and mark making, using a range of techniques. I am going to explore stitch especially, fabric dying and manipulating fabrics to make them look totally different. As my final outcomes for this project I am wanting to create a range of wall hangings for use in interior decoration.

I started off my collecting imagery that I found inspiring and that I could begin to work from. These are a few pages from my sketchbook where I have begun to come up with ideas.

From my sketchbook and the images that I have collected I am going to work with samples and explore the different techniques. I will post again with my first set of samples.