Lesley Mitchison  

Lesley Mitchison is a full time member of staff: Programme Leader for Creative Practice and tutor on the undergraduate programmes Textiles in Practice (TIP) & Textile Design with a specialism in weave.

Lesley is a practicing textile artist of international repute. After studying her BA (Hons) in Woven Textiles as the Surrey Institute (Farnham), she then went on to complete her MA at the University of Central England. She has been immersed in the educational system for the past twenty years working in many institutions in the UK and abroad, including Canberra School of Art, Australia and the Kawashima Weaving School in Japan.

Lesley’s research interests are focused around the loss of craft skills within our modern day society:

“For me it is the garment shape that has been pertinent in the establishing of a reputation within the textile arts. This work has alluded to the memory contained within items of clothing. The faded neutral colours of the ‘dress pieces’ and even their presentation sandwiched between thin sheets of Perspex call to mind the plain linen garments excavated from ancient Egyptian burial grounds which are now conserved in museum collections. From this initial research new work has evolved which is now not so preoccupied with the garment shape itself but more with the process of how to remember how to make. The ‘Passing on’ of this information and the teaching of skills to our children has led me to explore the notion of the
modern day sampler.”

Work in public & private collections including: The Whitworth Art Gallery, Nottingham Castle Contemporary Textile Collection, Gallery Gallery , Kyoto Japan.