Translating Textiles into Print: Jenny Steele’s Women in Print Residency

December 2024

Artlab Contemporary Print Studios, Preston by Iona Glen for Corridor 8

‘Apotropaic’ is the word artist and sculptor Jenny Steele sends me to describe her art, found in a book on Yorkshire folklore, meaning ‘supposedly having the power to avert evil influences or bad luck.’ I have been invited to discuss her Women in Print Residency at Artlab Contemporary Print Studios (ACPS) in the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Preston, our two meetings taking place in June and September. The concept of the apotropaic is fitting, for Steele’s work is imbued with a sense of warmth and optimism, integrating bright colour, textiles, and craft techniques like the willow weaving she works into her sculptures.

Steele’s artworks often feature woven textiles and passementerie – the art of making coils, braids and fringing typically used as decorative trimmings for furniture and clothes – combining ex-industrial yarn with organic materials like grasses, leaves, and flowers. Her series Cast of Characters (2023) are woven creels, vessels dressed in fringes, tassels, and ribbons. Assembled, they make up a kind of festive community. A tassel is both grand and ubiquitous, Steele explains, showing me examples in the studio. They have been used as talismans for millennia, mentioned in the Old Testament as memory-aides for sacred commandments, and attached to clothing and hats in the Middle East for protection from harm. In early modern Europe, elaborate passementerie was a significant status symbol; a French guild mandated a seven-year long apprenticeship to acquire its skills. Tassels are used in uniforms and rites-of-passage ceremonies, often found on graduation caps. Yet they also add flair to ordinary household objects like bathmats and curtains. There is something universal about them.

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Above image: Screen print of backstrap loom weaving on paper, 2024, Jenny Steele, 42cm x 59cm

Above: Detail of hand drawn watercolour screen print of textile tassel on paper, 2024, Jenny Steele, 25cm x 25cm.

Above: Detail of hand drawn lithography print on paper, 2024, Jenny Steele, 29.7 x 42cm Below: Screen print of hand wound cord on paper, 2024, Jenny Steele, 42cm x 59cm