Kelly Benjafield

I met Kelly Benjafield when I was a visiting tutor for a term at Nottingham Trent University back in 2009. It was the Autumn term and she was at the beginning of her final year. She has a wonderful quirky personality so I was really keen to see what she was going to end up producing for her final degree show exhibition. Such are the joys of the internet, from following a couple of random links I recently found myself at her blog and she has very kindly given me permission to share these images of her degree show with you here.

A pen and ink self portrait of herself entitled 'Sad Clown' was transformed into a jacquard woven composition of 13 panels in total measuring 6x4 foot. The fabrics were embroidered to add detail, then stretched over frames. I really admire the offbeat nature of her work: so not what you'd expect from a weave graduate. Not sure what she is up to now, but hope she manages to keep going with the weaving as there is real potential to push this idea further.

The original ink drawing



Detail showing the embroidery





The whole composition