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Ohiogozamas from England.
I began studying Japanese Embroidery in Spring of 2002 along with Judith Baldwin and we attend Jackie Hall's classes at Hawkwood College which is on the outskirts of Stroud in Gloucestershire (about 30 miles from Bristol). Hawkwood is a residential adult learning centre, offering a wide range of short courses, from music, science, arts and crafts to personal development, and is set in 42 acres of beautiful gardens, woods and fields, with its own spring water, in an area of outstanding natural beauty, with views over the Painswick and Slad valleys. The college is also well known for its wonderful organic food - some from it's own gardens, we don't recommend standing on the bathroom scales when returning home after a weeks course!
Our teacher - Jackie Hall was one of the first 7 English students to graduate in Atlanta and has been teaching at Hawkwood since 1996. Jackie teaches a mixture of day classes and residential courses over the year (she has also been teaching in France (Paris and Cannes) over the last 18 months as well!). For the residential courses we work in the Hall, which has views over the gardens and Slad valley and the day courses are usually held in the Studio which is very light but does not have the views!
For Phase 1, we embroidered the Bouquet from the Heart of Japan, which seemed to take forever and we finally finished (along with Jane Kokoszko) in April 2004. I embroidered Hanazume as a practice piece and am currently working on Sensu (Phase 2-3). Judith has just completed Suehiro (Phase 2) and is working on Venerable Friends (Phase 3). In October 2004, we were very privileged to be able to take part in the White Blossoms class at Hawkwood, which was taught by Tamura-San, Kazume-San (from the JEC) and Chicato-San (from Kurenai-Kai). There were about 40 students on this course and 3 versions of the design were taught - we were on the "easy" one.
Along with 16 others we've just attended the April 5-day residential course. The students came from many parts of England - Norfolk, Suffolk, Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire, Kent, Hertfordshire, Dorset and Oxfordshire and some more local day attendees from Warwickshire and Gloucestershire - some travelling large distances (for us! - although probably nothing for you in the USA!). This was a multi-level class with students working on all 10 phases and 2 people working on challenge pieces. The residential class runs from 9.30 until 18.30 with breaks for coffee and lunch but the "early-shift" can be found working on their pieces before breakfast and the "late-shift" for several hours after supper!
Here are some pictures of the college and the class for you to see.
Dr Michele Ellender
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