Monday 2^nd June

Janet Connett   “Telling Tales” 

 

Member, Sue, joined us for out meeting from Scotland via the medium of zoom.  It was good to see her still taking part in the group’s meetings.

                                   Sue can just be seen on the mobile phone 

                    Carol was very happy to introduce her sister in law as our speaker for June

                                                        

                                                              Janet Connett

Our speaker, Janet graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2024. Janet’s talk related to three bodies of work –

The body beautiful – how we present ourselves to the world - and why.

Connecting threads – mother, daughter relationships and family stories.

In Stitches and in Health – voice and comfort.

                                Corset – liberating and constraining

 

 

Janet spoke about family relationships and brought along clothes from three generations of the family and linked them with fabric, stitch and colour to form a family tree.

Family tree / clothes line

In Stitches and in Health

Janet has a great interest and has researched women committed to lunatic asylums in 19^th C and how they incorporated subversive text into stitched artefacts. 

Finding their voice through their sewing. 

We heard about Agnes Richter, a seamstress who embroidered a jacket she made while being held in a psychiatric hospital in Germany.  The written record of her suffering is stitched into the jacket, but it was worked inside out and the sleeves backwards.  Possibly trying to tell of her world being turned upside down.  

The Jacket is now housed in the Prinzhorn Collection

Thank you Janet for your most interesting talk.  This report is only a tip of the iceberg of the things you told us about, and how many women managed to find a voice though their sewing to let people know of their suffering