Thinking With Your Hands

 I am a lacemaker and embroiderer, often both together as much of my work is stumpwork or 3d embroidery. This is all usually posted on my main blog The Glass Pingle. This blog is to document my work as artist in residence at Imperial College London where I am working with the vascular surgery deparrtment.
  The reason? The short film above explains the thinking but I have been working with Prof. Roger Kneebone now for a couple of years and it is from the sessions held at The Art Workers' Guild with his team that this collaboration was born. It has its' roots way back in the early 1900's with a surgeon called Alexis Carrel who had learnt embroidery and lacemaking from his mother and her friends. This inspired him to develop the techniques of vascular surgery which are still in use now. In short, he worked out how to save limbs from amputation.So... I was introduced to a vascular surgeon and our understanding of each others craft was immediate!
   The aim of this project is to see how we can illuminate each others work so I will be teaching trainee and fully qualified surgeons how to embroider and make lace and they will be showing me what they do! That is a very simple outline of what is a very thorough examination of what very experienced craftspeople from very different areas can learn from each other.