As part of Jane Atkinson’s exhibition Ebb n Flow, Jane organised a number of workshops for a host of international lace artists such as; Pierre Fouche, Denise Watts, Ann Allison, Lauran Sundin.

Lauran Sundin creates beautiful and unique pieces of statement jewellery using gold and silver wire and I was lucky enough to attend Lauran’s wire lace workshop.

Garden Party - one of Lauran’s masterpieces (Photo courtesy of Lauran Sundin)

We had a great weekend learning wire lace techniques from Lauran and seeing Lauran’s “ballet fingers” in action. One of a Lauran’s favourite sayings is “if you never make anything you’ll never make a mistake “ a good mantra to live by, whatever you choose to do in life.

At the end of our first day we were treated to a personal tour of Jane’s Ebb n Flow exhibition. It was lovely to hear where the inspiration for the exhibition came from and learn about Jane’s design process. On display with the exhibition pieces were some of Jane’s sketchbooks which showed how each design was created.

The Walford Mill was a great location and the learning loft was a lovely space to spend the weekend and was very well equipped with everything we needed.

The Ebb ‘n’ Flow exhibition was a spectacular story of climate change depicted in a number of lace panels created by Lace artist Jane Atkinson. The exhibition was held at the Walford Mill and Priest’s House in Wimborne.

Jane’s panels depict many different elements of nature some feel familiar such as flowers, trees and birds.

Other aspects are more unexpected such as oxygen bubbles and ice. I hadn’t really give oxygen bubbles much thought until I saw Jane’s four panels Oxygen 1 - 4 which captures the bubbles of life so beautifully.

Jane was inspired by her daily walks through nature to create many of the pieces in this exhibition, and she has used her art to give us a very personal and intimate view of the changes she has seen, and this is relatable to us all as we are all seeing similar events and the impact of climate change in our local areas and homes.

I loved how the exhibition had been assembled and how some of the pieces were hung from the ceiling so you could walk in between them and others were framed within acrylic/perspex.

The catalogue accompanying this exhibition is beautifully produced and as well as containing detailed notes for each piece, explaining the inspiration for them contains good quality photographs of each piece. I loved the ‘Healing the planet’ suggestions at the bottom of each page which were interesting and sobering. One read that “3° of global warming, raising the sea by 2m, would devastate capital cities worldwide. Coal burning must stop, but Dorset rejected a 970 MW coastal wind farm in 2015.”

Other lace artists work was also on display at the Mill including Lauran Sundin, Denise Watts and Ann Allison.