3 years of TextileArtist.org: Top 10 most popular guides of all time
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We are now in our fourth year and, as always, we aim to be a hub of information and inspiration for you everyday. During 2016 our goal is to grow and develop our range of articles; we can achieve this by listening to you and responding to your needs. Your thoughts, comments and fears inspire us to write articles that hopefully enable you to combat the challenges of being an artist.
This is the third in our Best of TextileArtist.org series, in which we take a retrospective look at some of our most successful and inspirational content over the past three years.
Every week we receive hundreds of e-mails from you, our fast growing international community of textile artists, expressing your ideas, challenges, beliefs and concerns. Getting you started on new adventures is very close to our hearts, so here we take a look back at the ten most popular guides of all time.
Buying used sewing and embroidery machines
In this article from 2013 we delve into the advantages and disadvantages of buying used sewing machines, addressing points such as what questions to ask the seller, which machine would serve your ability and needs best and does age and condition matter? It proved a very popular topic with our audience who provided some interesting comments and invaluable advice – a must read for anyone about to make a purchase!
Displaying and hanging textile art
When dealing with such a crucial subject matter it was important for us to talk to someone who has a wealth of experience and Anne Kelly sprung to mind. Her knowledge of both curating exhibitions and submitting work to galleries, solo and in groups, proved priceless. In this article from September 2013 she shares practical advice for hanging textile art with the aim of helping you display your work as successfully as possible. Over 25,000 of you have read the article so far!
Sketchbooks and mind mapping for textile artists
During her studies and whilst teaching freelance at University, College and branches of the Quilters Guild and other textile related Guilds Bren Boardman developed a process using sketchbooks and mind maps to help students advance an idea through to an original piece of work. In this article, Bren shares her process and explains how she uses the formula to help produce her gallery art textiles.
Finding an audience for your art
Having run a survey in our newsletter to find out what the biggest challenges faced by contemporary artists are, we invited 23 textile and fiber practitioners to give their thoughts about who they believe their art is for, if and why it matters and what their feelings about ‘audience’ are. Their responses are considered, informative and dramatically different. It’s worth checking in for some inspiration alone. 30,000 people already have!
How to photograph textile art
Perhaps a more practical and less philosophical article than the last, but by no means less important, we address the issue of how to photograph your artwork. In this piece from April 2014 we give an easy step by step guide into preparing and photographing your art. There’s also some top tips and a video to help you along the way.
Pinterest for textile artists – the basics
Pinterest is the perfect platform for textile art (although not everybody agrees, as you can see from the comments section of this article!). As well as discussing the reasons why, we talk you through it’s basic premise, the advantages plus where and how to get started. It’s a very handy read if you’re new to Pinterest as we offer 10 small things every textile artist can do to make the most of Pinterest straight away.
This article caused a bit of controversy and it’s worth reading just for the debate in the comments section alone!
Finding inspiration for textile art
Cas Holme has been a friend and regular contributor to TextleArtist.org from the very beginning. Her articles usually have a profound effect on our audience and this one from May 2013 is no exception. She shares with us her insights into where she finds her inspiration. The article was written after a recent trip she’d made to Australia, where she was invited to conduct a series workshops with fiber art students there.
Do you have the mind-set of a professional artist?
TextileArtist.org co-creator Joe Pitcher wrote this article as a response to The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. In his piece from May 2014 Joe explores the day to day challenges faced by professional textile artist and discusses the differences in mind-set between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’. So far the article has been viewed over 20,000 times and has sparked an in depth conversation which you can follow and join in via the comments section.
10 tips for writing an artist statement
Published in September 2014 we look at a few ways to overcome the challenge of writing a great artist statement. We understand many artists have significant problems when it comes to writing about their work and so we decided to address this with our 10 step guide which proved useful to many of you according to the comments and feed back we received.
“Thank you for the article. It had enlightened me about this important subject.” Maria Claudia Manrique
Applying and submitting art to galleries
Once the work has been created and your ready to show it off to the world the next challenge for many of you is simply how to approach and exhibit in galleries. It’s a subject we wanted to dedicate an article to and in May 2013 we invited one of the UK’s leading artists in machine embroidery Carol Naylor to share her thoughts on the topic.
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Can’t find a link to the Bren Boardman article?
Hello Lyn, apologies and here’s the link:
https://www.textileartist.org/bren-boardman-on-mind-maps-and-sketchbooks/