Spring Tides Exhibition at Watersmeet, Rickmansworth

4/28/2022

I had the privilege of joining my friend and fellow student Heather Curwen from Hertfordshire University this month for our first joint show since graduation. Heather is a wonderful artist who creates beautiful, gentle collages and digital prints. Check out her website here.

I displayed a collection of work from my new series of Vortographs. These were taken down on the Lymington seafront throughout the winter months. I also had the images printed onto 100% silk georgette scarves and they have printed beautifully.

The tiles can be arranged in different ways. Any sized grid can be created and by rotating the tiles I have created a whole new kaleidoscopic effect. Individual tiles are 20.32cm x 20.32cm and are £20 each. Scarves are £43 each. I will be opening up a store on my website soon and before that you can contact me using the contact page should you wish to make an order.

Artist's Statement for the Spring Tides Exhibition

Rae Reynolds - A Visual Explorer’s Journey

I am a mixed media, multi disciplinary artist working with photography, paint, stitch, and paper collage. Until recently, textiles played centre stage in my work with felt-making and machine embroidery being my go to materials. For 20 years my work revolved around textiles, I made my work from wool and thread and built my career in teaching around the materials I was using. My shelves were piled high with scraps of fabric, interesting spools of thread, loose fibres, knitting wool and felting equipment. It was a love affair with texture, colour and pattern that I hoped would never end.

Then in 2018 I started my Masters Degree at the University of Hertfordshire where I decided to empty my creative pockets and continue my visual journey using other media. I rediscovered a love of darkroom and digital photography and started experimenting with taking photographs through a homemade kaleidoscope, one of my favourite toys as a child. I later found out these kaleidoscopic photos were called Vortographs, first developed by the artist and photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn around 1915.

With my homemade kaleidoscope I take mostly macro shots using just my phone. I have recently been lent a macro lens for my DSLR and am excited to see how the work develops using this. The images in ‘Spring Tide’ are taken along the New Forest coastline in between Lymington and Keyhaven where I spend a lot of time walking the dog. My work has always been inspired by movement, walking, light, shadow, colour and texture. The challenge for the vortographs is creating an image that invokes the feeling of being within and moving through the landscape. Whilst moving, our eyes flicker about and absorb information about what we are seeing, where we are treading, where the light is, what colour things are etc whilst our brains are busy planning, remembering and problem solving. I am interested in capturing the fragmented and complex visual snapshots that we gain from going for a walk. At the same time I loook for the organic and geometrical beauty in the detail of the world around us that we can often miss.

My love affair with texture, colour and pattern has not ended. I have found that the method has changed but the context and delight I feel for the visual and textural world has come with me. I have changed the way I see things, I no longer consider myself a ‘textile artist’ and sometimes not even an artist. I prefer to think of myself as a visual explorer or hunter gatherer. My work is about the joy that comes from exploring and experimenting and reconnecting to that feeling of delight I felt when playing with a kaleidoscope when I was a little girl.