Stitch Stories: Cas Holmes

Cas Holmes draws on her relationship with nature and the links with family history to tell stories with textiles. She incorporates found materials and bits of fallen flora she finds while walking through her adopted County, Kent.

Cas Holmes draws with needle and thread using her stitches as her drawing tool, sewing together the layers of ephemera gathered from life and nature. Her textiles reflect an environmental theme noting the changes in the landscape that occur with humans' impact on the land. Pieces of worn clothing and household fabrics help tell the stories of peoples' lives, members of her family and people she has known who find their way into her work. Her delicate collages form a window into the lives of the people who wore the clothing and used the household textiles.

Cas Holmes teaches workshops around the world and has authored books about her work and her techniques. "I make pieces for public and private spaces," states Holmes. "The challenge of creating works for different spaces is open to all kinds of possibilities, and I have made installations and public art pieces for hospitals, community spaces, museums and the workplace."

Exhibition overview from Museum website

Whether or not you go, in Stitch Stories: Personal Places, Spaces and Traces in Textile Art, Cas Holmes explains how everything, from a walk in the park to an exotic trip, can provide inspiration for personal narratives that become beautiful stitched-textile pieces.