Friday Feature Artist

Sarah Brayer is a Kyoto-based artist working across painting, woodblock printmaking, and washi papermaking. Her practice explores light, impermanence, and the inner life through meditative mark-making. In this conversation, she reflects on four decades of integrating meditation with art-making and the launch of her course, Art as Meditation. The episode offers a quiet, considered look at how still...

Jane Walkley is a Leeds-based artist working across tapestry, mould making, and casting. Her practice explores memory, labour, and regeneration within post-industrial sites. In this conversation, she reflects on her research at Sunny Bank Mill, where material, rhythm, and lived experience converge. The episode offers a considered look at process-led making and how meaning develops through repetiti...

Australian artist Shona Wilson creates delicate, ephemeral works in collaboration with nature, transforming found materials into moments of quiet wonder. With a practice spanning three decades, she reflects on attention, scale and connection – inviting us to slow down and rediscover the extraordinary within the everyday. This episode is a gentle meditation on making, presence and belonging. Visit...

In this episode, we chat with Hungarian textile artist Kinga Földi creates delicate silk sculptures shaped by pintuck, origami and a deep attentiveness to nature. After years in fashion, costume and theatre design, she turned to freestanding sculptural work as a slower, more personal form of expression. This discussion explores material transformation, patient making, and the search for forms that...

In this episode, ceramic artist Juz Kitson creates visceral, hybrid sculptures that blur the line between human, animal and object. Working across porcelain, found materials and installation, her practice is both technically rigorous and deeply intuitive. In this conversation, Juz reflects on process, materiality, and what it means to reinvent tradition while building a sustainable creative life....

In conversation, mixed media artist and educator Robert Lee Davis reflects on creativity as a deeply human, accessible practice grounded in memory, observation and play. Working with found materials and everyday fragments, he reveals how art can soften the world, invite reflection, and reconnect us to ourselves. This conversation offers a gentle yet powerful reminder that creativity begins whereve...

After decades working in functional ceramics, Ann Weber shifted her practice toward monumental cardboard sculpture – transforming a humble, discarded material into powerful, anthropomorphic forms. In this conversation, she reflects on material, scale, persistence, and purpose, offering a deeply honest look at what it means to build a life in art. Visit our website to explore our courses , or dive...

Textile artist Sue Hotchkis transforms everyday decay into captivating, layered artworks that blur the line between 2D and 3D. Through photography, printing, dyeing, and stitching, she reimagines textures, rust, weathered walls, and peeling paint into sculptural fabrics. This episode explores her fearless experimentation, intuitive process, and how she finds beauty in imperfection, chance, and the...

In this episode, tufting artist Melissa Monroe creates exuberant textile works that sit somewhere between furniture, sculpture and wall-based art. In this conversation, she shares how colour, character and everyday life shape her practice – and how instinct, material knowledge and a willingness to loosen up allow each piece to become itself fully. Visit our website to explore our courses , or dive...

In this episode, Sophie Edwards speaks with French artist Stéphanie Devaux about the quiet dialogue between writing and textile. Working across calligraphy, embroidery and artist books, Stéphanie transforms text into tactile form. She reflects on learning from rare books in Paris, the meditative rhythm of stitch and script, and the moment when ink and thread dissolve into one visual language. Visi...

In this episode, we hear how Japanese designer Kazuya Nohara and his partner Miki work with traditional Hontate indigo fermentation in rural Japan, creating hand-sewn garments dyed in living vats he tends himself. In this thoughtful conversation, he reflects on learning to release control, building a business at nature’s pace, and seeing indigo not just as colour, but as culture, partnership and p...

In this episode, textile artist Shelly Goldsmith works across hand weaving, digital cloth and installation to explore inheritance, motherhood and the origins of self. In conversation with Jo Wright, she reflects on slow process, psychological theory and the courage to trust intuition. This thoughtful episode moves between the intimate and the cosmic, revealing how cloth becomes a vehicle for life’...

In this episode, textile artist Julian Jamaal Jones reimagines quilting as contemporary fine art – bold, abstract works built from sketches, printed cloth, and rhythmic stitching. In conversation with Angela Truscott, Julian reflects on making through grief, family lineage, and the freedom of abstraction as protection. A thoughtful episode about taste, confidence, and building a signature language...

In this episode, psychologist, writer and textile maker Nicole Nehrig joins Jo Wright for a wide-ranging conversation on the social, historical, and cultural power of making. Drawing from her book and lived experience, Nicole reflects on craft as a therapeutic practice, a cultural language, and a tool for connection, protest and meaning-making across time. Visit our website to explore our courses...

In this episode, quilter and multidisciplinary artist Casey Engel moves between fibre, ceramics, printmaking and painting – chasing that “magnificent wobble” only handwork can hold. In this conversation, she reflects on embracing imperfection, trusting risk, and making work that resists utility while staying deeply intimate. From thrifted textiles to residencies without internet, Casey shares a pr...

In this episode, Claire Benn joins Deborah White to reflect on handwriting as an expressive, material practice. Working across ink, paper and textiles, Claire speaks about text as mark, texture and gesture rather than language. The conversation explores learning through repetition, suspending judgement, and how slowing down can open new creative pathways. Claire also shares insights into the ideas...

As a new brand (and new era!) of the business begins, founder Angela Truscott speaks to Creative Director Jo Wright about building an inclusive creative community rooted in education, quality, and care. Angela shares the personal and professional journey behind Take Two – from leaving corporate life to championing artists, students, a caring team, and collaboration. This episode offers rare insigh...

From her studio on the Hampshire coast, textile sculptor Bryony Jennings stitches soulful creatures from vintage cloth, forgotten buttons and timeworn threads. In this thoughtful conversation, Bryony reflects on the slow magic of her making process, how fabric holds memory, and the quiet bravery of balancing motherhood, art and imagination. Visit our website to view Bryony’s work, explore our cour...

Marian Jazmik is a UK-based textile artist known for her inventive mixed media sculptures inspired by nature’s quiet details. In this conversation, Marion shares how retirement became her creative beginning, why texture speaks louder than colour, and how found objects and experimental play underpin her captivating practice. Visit our website to view Marian’s work, explore our courses , or dive int...

Ukrainian artist Olga Radionova transforms wood, metal and textiles into sculptural works that explore strength, vulnerability and rebirth. From soft sculptures to weapon remnants reborn as flowers, Olga’s practice is both a tactile celebration of material and a profound response to life in a war-torn country. This episode is a powerful meditation on creativity, resilience, and the transformative...

What does it mean to know a place? For textile artists Dorothy Caldwell and Claire Benn, it begins with walking, listening, collecting – and letting the land leave its mark. In this rare and intimate conversation across three continents, these lifelong artists and friends reflect on pigment, place, and the deep, quiet power of working with cloth, soil, and time. Visit our website to view Dorothy a...

Canadian-born artist Sandra Meech blends photography, painting, and stitch to tell layered stories of landscape, memory and climate. Drawing from Arctic expeditions and the flooded fields of Somerset, her work reveals what lies beneath – from melting glaciers to ancient ammonites. In this rich conversation, Sandra shares how sketchbooks, digital collage and the natural world continue to guide her...

Painter, printmaker and educator Sally Hirst brings a fearless, can-do spirit to her richly layered abstractions. Guided by memory, material and the textures of the urban environment, Sally’s work is an evolving conversation between painting, printmaking and collage. In this lively conversation, she shares how curiosity, risk and repurposing drive her process – and why the best ideas often start w...

Lissy and Rudi Cole are collaborative fibre artists, visionaries and partners in life and art. Guided by aroha, whakapapa and a bold creative spirit, they transform simple crochet into monumental public artworks. In this intimate episode, the Coles share the story behind their neon-pink whare nui, their soulful creative process, and their deep belief in the power of art to heal, connect and uplift...

Through the vivid language of punch needle tapestry, Simone Elizabeth Saunders reclaims and reimagines Western art histories. A Canadian artist of Jamaican and African descent, Simone weaves narratives of Black womanhood, liberation and ancestral connection into lush, large-scale works rooted in Art Nouveau, the Renaissance and her own lived experience. In this conversation, she shares the spiritu...