Collect Week: Michelle House - Celebrating What Remains
“My mother was always sewing: sewing curtains, sewing clothes,” says textile artist Michelle House, known for her vibrant, brightly coloured screen prints. “The sewing machine was always on the table. She’d be sort of kneeling on the carpet, pinning linings on curtains or doing something. So I learned from her.” The influence of House’s mother is such that House created Celebrating What Remains – (What You Stole from Me), a poignant work that reflects on her mother, who died last April, to be shown at Collect Open in late February.
House’s mother was a peripatetic hairdresser, with three children, elderly parents to care for, and a husband working nights “She was very busy woman, but I don't think my parents ever bought curtains in 65 years of marriage,” House says. She also made clothes for herself and her children. That interest in sewing, combined with her mother’s habit of keeping odd scraps of material and her father’s similar attitude to metal, rubbed off on House, though she didn’t immediately see textile as a possible career.
After a Fine Arts Foundation at Southampton, where House didn’t touch textiles, she went onto Goldsmiths, concentrating on large collages, before experimenting with print in her second year. “Up until then, I was a bit lost,” she said. “I’d always really loved colour. When I got to Goldsmiths, no one else was doing it around me, and I felt like it wasn't allowed. It wasn’t serious.” Fortunately, the extremely impressive teaching body, including Mary Restiaux, Michael Brennan Wood, Shirley Craven, Sally Grieves, and Janice Jeffries, and visiting lecturers like Lois Walpole and Alice Kettle, encouraged House’s development.
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