Sue Spence Textile Artist - Open Studios

Sue is in the Helford Artists Collective. She creates decorative and wearable textile art from vintage materials in the workroom at her village home.

A self-taught, life-long embroiderer, Sue has been making textile art for seven years, since retiring from a career teaching English. Her former home study has become a workroom stuffed with fabric, thread and the paraphernalia of an enthusiastic creative life: art, books and quirky objects.

Sue is inspired by the memories held in old materials of people and places; literature, and the natural world, especially the Cornish landscape – coasts and woodlands. Her love of trees and wildflowers is evident in her smaller decorative pieces, including embroidered brooches.

Aiming to have an entirely sustainable practice, Sue works with preloved and used materials, hand sewing vintage fabrics, papers and found objects into stitched collages and other work with a strong narrative, often adding text, including her own poetry to tell stories in stitch.

Sue has exhibited her work throughout the UK and in the USA, but this is her first year of Open Studios.

Sue is also one of the founding members of the Helford Artists Collective, a small group of artists who live and work by the Helford River across a variety of mediums, all of whom will be participating in Open Studios this year, forming a short circuit ideal for visiting within the same day. Close by are the fabulous Trebah and Glendurgan Gardens, the Helford River and its swimming beaches, Budock Vean Hotel and the Ferryboat Inn.