Saltaire Arts Trail is an annual event, held over the three day late May bank holiday weekend. It's when many Saltaire residents open their homes and gardens as mini art galleries, so that you can wander all around the village and see some truly creative work.
Usually I feel excited by it, but this year I only dipped into it briefly. With Bradford being UK City of Culture 2025, there is a huge amount of creative stuff going on locally, so much so that I feel almost satiated with it. The weather didn't help either! The wonderful, long, dry, sunny spell suddenly broke, bringing rain and strong winds - bad timing just when it was our schools' half term break.
I did, however, explore the large Makers' Fair in Victoria Hall and some of the outdoor exhibits. I enjoyed the work of students from Bradford School of Art (degree in Textiles Practice), tasked with creating an original textile piece based on a second-hand men's shirt. Jasmin Lindo-Clarke referenced her Jamaican parents' immigration to the UK in the 1960s, using motifs and labels. 'You made my collar white' (above) represents the blue-collar work her parents undertook to enable her to have a white-collar career. Another student had decorated a shirt with various symbols and words about what makes them happy (below).
Julia Batley had embroidered tiny books with 'shirt labels', narrating the names and lives of students at Huddersfield Mechanics Institute in 1872. Exquisite.
Outside the Victoria Hall, a rather wind-blown tent just about sheltered exhibits by Saltaire Art School associates, with artist Peter Wood giving a live painting demonstration.
Too bad about the weather.
ReplyDeleteI love the collars and what they represent!
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