Dawn Campion Derbyshire, United Kingdom
I am a textile artist. I use upcycled materials to machine embroider and to make rugs. I am a teddy bear artist making bears using preloved items and mohair. I enjoy teaching arts and crafts in the community and online. Art is a lifeline for me and helps me to focus, managing pain and time.
My main practice is textiles, however I will experiment with many different media. I make artist bears, using any fabric and hand sewing things like crisp packets and chocolate wrappers and making these into fully jointed bears. Bears range from 4cm to 160cm. Most of my bears are hands sewn, I will use the sewing machine for the very large bears, but as I sew everywhere the sewing machine is difficult to use on the bus. I have made bears using newspapers, bra's, fur coats, sweet wrappers and anything that I can get a needle through. Most of my bears are fully jointed and I recently made a string puppet. I have recently added an embroidery machine to my craft room. I now create digital computer images and embroider onto watercolour paintings to create wall art. During the Covid 19 lock-down I made a lock down wall hanging, it has embroidered badges showing the services and people who supported us through the Shielding process and I then started to create mixed media wall hangings. I now digitise photos and embroider them on to upcycled bags, cards or wall hangings. Textiles is such a broad medium and the options are endless. Not all fabric is useful for embroidery or bear making. The textiles that are not used for other things are used in rug making. Locker hug rugs came out of America in the 1970’s. Using this technique I can create images that can be used as wall hangings. Teaching art was a distant dream, but dreams will come true if you make them happen. I started teaching textiles and upcycling in the centre of Derby and surrounding schools in 2018. I have also taught online during the pandemic.
