Uno22: Nine

An Extra Special Kaleidoscopic Selection of Artwork for Artwave 22

Gallery Uno, 14a High Street, Seaford BN25 1PG UNO22 NINE Opening times: Mon – Sat 10am – 4pm, Sundays and Bank Holiday Monday midday – 3pm. Open daily throughout Artwave – Saturday 27th August to Monday 26th Sept (closed Weds 31st August and 21st Sept).

September arrives and with it the twenty-ninth festival of visual art, Artwave. As with the other fourteen other venues around the town, Gallery Uno will be warmly inviting you in and will be taking enormous pride in showing you their extra special ‘kaleidoscopic’ selection of art, craft and design for the occasion.

Our featured exhibitor during Artwave uniquely challenges the boundaries between craft and art. Working in textiles, Linda Wells produces framed, embroidered compositions that could be easily mistaken for fine art painting. Frustratingly her participation in Sussex Arts Collective events had to be deferred due to COVID. Her work now has become an indispensable part of their exhibitions at Uno and greatly admired by the many.

Linda Wells – Fibre & Textile Art

Originally from Bromley in Kent, Linda started her working life in window display. Whilst working at Marshall and Snelgrove in Oxford Street, London, she learnt her trade by attending day-release courses and on-the-job training. At that time window displays played a large role in projecting the image of the retailer and were all individually tailored for each store. She recalls one Christmas when the windows were dressed as Dickensian street scenes, with the display team making every prop and costume from scratch. Yet, there wasn’t a single piece of merchandise for sale. and implement interior displays and adapting them for stands for Ideal Home exhibitions at Earl’s Court. This inspired her to study Interior Design, subsequently becoming contracts manager for the House of Fraser at their London head office. Amongst her various clients was a house builder who commissioned Linda to design and dress over forty show homes in and around London, eventually supplying the homeowners with everything down to knives and forks. Her client list also significantly included royalty, supplying gifts to the household of the Queen Mother at Clarence House. One of her treasured memories was when she met the Queen Mother and her corgis at St James’ Palace.

After moving to Buckinghamshire, Linda returned to academic studies in Fine Art and Textiles, gaining a City and Guilds in Creative Embroidery. Now working part time, Linda found she had free time to join art groups and exhibit on a regular basis.

During a trip to New Zealand, Linda discovered wool fibres and the unbelievable range of colours available. On return Linda experimented with wet felting, where the agitation of fibres forms a fabric ideal as a base for embroidery. Thereafter and for the past 14 years she has developed her distinctive techniques, capturing other fibres and threads in the felt base before adding detail by machine and hand embroidery. She likens it to drawing and painting, but using wool fibres and threads to build up layers and returning to a piece several times. No two works are the same; what she calls ‘Linda-vidual’.

Her love of the Sussex coast and countryside eventually brought her to Seaford, and it’s the local landscape that she now finds her greatest inspiration. In addition to her felt compositions, she exploits the versatility of the medium, producing small gift items all available at Uno.

SEPTEMBER 3RD-25TH 2022

JOIN US FOR LOTS OF WALKS, TALKS, EXHIBITIONS AND FUN THROUGHOUT SEPTEMBER!

FULL PROGRAMME ONLINE OR IN TOURIST OFFICES.

www.newhavenfestival.co.uk