Showcase

LUSCIOUS LANDSCAPES
Claire Hedgpeth, Auckland Embroiderers' Guild

 Rangitikei River 2

For more images of Claire's work go to the Gallery page of this site. 

Over the years, there have been some wonderful embroiderers whose work always attracts attention at exhibitions. One such person is Auckland embroiderer Claire Hedgpeth.

Claire’s work is always impeccably designed, stitched and presented (and always very desirable – I’ve often thought how nice her embroideries would look hanging on my wall). Also noticeable is the way she builds on techniques, taking a concept and extending it into something new and original.

Claire was the recipient of an ANZEG travel scholarship at Gore Conference in 2006 and used it to take a five day class in Mudgee, New South Wales, with Judy Wilford, ‘Hand Embroidering the Landscape’. Judy is well known to many in New Zealand as a past Conference tutor and through classes in many parts of the country.

Claire thoroughly enjoyed the experience and found Judy an excellent teacher. But for Claire the class was only a starting point. She has taken the ideas she learnt with Judy and expanded and explored the techniques using it to great effect in an embroidery of the Kapiti Coast (below) and combining it with stumpwork in a vertical format to create a view of Waitemata Harbour. She had a display of these marvellous embroideries at Conference in Hawkes Bay but they were tucked away at the end of the Guild displays and not seen by many there amongst the welter of embroidery and ideas and throngs of people.

Claire comes to embroidery with a background in interior and exterior design. After completing a Diploma in Environmental Design and New Zealand Certificate in Architectural Draughting, she worked for an architectural practice and often made conceptual scale models of the proposed commercial buildings and domestic residences designed by the architects, colour models and sample buildings and a great variety of commercial buildings with landscaped gardens. Claire found working up presentation boards for clients, and all it entailed, creatively satisfying and it also gave her a very thorough grounding in drawing, sampling and generally experimenting to create a design and planning how it might be executed and presented.

Presentation is always very important to her and so she has learnt to do her own framing. “It’s the only way you can control how you want it to look,” she says. It’s not necessarily cheaper but Claire believes “presentation is as important as the work itself. It’s such a shame when a piece of work is spoilt by poor framing. Everyone is using canvas blocks at present but you still have to present them well. It’s easy to cover them – after all when people look at an embroidery they’ll also be looking at the mounting. The first lesson at design school was ‘what you present is a reflection of yourself’ and so it’s important to finish things well.”

A two-year home study course in traditional embroidery with Effie Mitrofanis through the NSW Guild gave Claire a thorough grounding in embroidery including Rococo style, Mountmellick, Deerfield and Art Deco through to contemporary. She initially joined the Auckland Embroiderers’ Guild because it had a very good library and Claire loves being able to research techniques and ideas extensively, reading widely on each subject. Previously she had been stitching with the Onehunga Community Centre stitching group run by Sue Pilkington, enjoying a variety of projects.

When I visited Claire she had several things on the go, Christmas decorations and other items for the Guild’s sale day, plus an original crewelwork Jacobean design for the seat of an upholstered chair. The back had been embroidered some thirty years ago. This was completed with two weeks to spare and the chair (at right) fully reupholstered at the last adult learning centre night classes held at the local high school.

Another task Claire has taken on was redesigning the Auckland Guild banner . The committee had decided the old banner was too small, so Claire redesigned it, incorporating the old banner and marrying artistic with traditional design to give it a Pacific sense of place with the harbour and yachts, pohutukawa, and stylised Polynesian and Maori patterns. Her workbook of design ideas, experiments and colour samples for this project is very impressive, creating a wonderful library of ideas for later reference.

There are so many facets of embroidery to explore and Claire is thinking about combining hand and machine embroidery, a technique she also enjoys. “There’s something in the combination that appeals,” she says. She is also learning to use an airbrush to add another dimension, as well as altered photo images printed on fabric using her digital camera, computer and printer. Who knows what will be next for this talented embroiderer who loves the challenge and excitement of creating, backed by excellent design skills and observation? 

Felicity Willis