Profile

Jenni Cadman is a textile artist and tutor living in West Dorset. Originally graduating with a degree in Printed Textile Design in 1980, she took up stitching professionally 12 years later. In 2000 and 2001 she received Crafts Awards from the Arts Council South West to develop her landscaped inspired work and since then has established herself firmly as an important West Country textile artist and inspirational teacher.
Technically, Jenni has over the years ventured into many areas, drawing on traditional and contemporary textile processes such as hand stitching, machine embroidery, cut-work and appliqué. For the past 5 years her time has been spent experimenting with the painting and distressing of embroidered silks, a unique and unpredictable process which she has developed by taking risks, pushing at the limits of the fabric.
Her new work has concentrated on her daily walk from home, through a deer park, to her studio. For this collection she has moved into a new direction with stitch being the predominant feature, a laborious procedure of using the small to create the large. Drawing with the needle, she ‘colours in’ areas of cloth using the rhythmical action of a sewing machine applying broad painterly sweeps of subtle colours in crochet, rayon and cotton threads.
Jenni sells her one-off textile pictures and hangings through exhibitions and, as a member of the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, at Bovey Tracey, Devon.
Recent exhibitions include ‘Trig Point’, Study Gallery in Poole, ‘Journeyland’, The Brewhouse Gallery, Taunton, ‘Journeys:The Art of Making’, Sussex Barn Gallery, West Dean College, Chichester.
She has 11 years teaching experience in the form of residencies and workshops working with schools, colleges and embroidery guilds. A recent community arts project based in Weymouth culminated in the making of a banner for a 100 plus choir of adults and children.

www.axisweb.org to see CV and biography