December 2025 Newsletter
WELCOME FROM OUR CHAIRS
As it is the season of giving, we like you to meet Meg Tonkin, who has joined us through our new PRISM Mentoring Programme. Meg is a student on the BA Fine Art course at Central Saint Martins. In their third year, students have the option to undertake a Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS), which allows them to spend a year gaining experience in the wider field of art and craft.
We first met Meg during our exhibition earlier this year, where she introduced herself and asked for advice about what might be possible during a year focused on hands-on practice. This sparked the idea of establishing a PRISM mentoring programme, one that would support a student throughout the year and allow them to meet as many of our members as possible, learning directly from their diverse practices.
Meg will be with us for the 2025/26 academic year and will exhibit with us in our 2026 exhibition, Dictionary, at the Mile End Art Pavilion. This will give her an opportunity to create work shaped by the input, experience, and wide-ranging practices of our members. She will also be part of the exhibition team, gaining insight into everything that goes into producing an exhibition of that scale, from planning to behind-the-scenes organisation.
Please check out her Instagram @meg.tonkin, where she regularly posts updates on her adventures with PRISM.
We wish you all the very best for the festive season, and offer a heartfelt thank you for the tremendous support you’ve shown our group, by attending our exhibitions, staying connected through Instagram and our website, and being part of our community.
Wishing you a wonderful end to 2025 and an inspiring year ahead.
Thank you
Wolfgang Woerner, Chair
Jane Riley, Vice Chair
MEMBERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT THIS MONTH
SABINE KANER
Sabine is a mixed media artist working with hand stitch, colour, print, and repurposed fabrics. Her stitched illustrations explore stories of migration, identity, memory, and the human condition. Each piece is layered with metaphors, symbols, and narrative intention, offering a space where personal and collective histories intersect.
She creates abstract textile art through embroidery, appliqué, and collage, blending tradition with modern storytelling. By contrasting textured and flat surfaces, she builds visual tension that encourages viewers to notice both what is shown and what is concealed. Her use of fragmented forms, motifs, colour, and stitched lines expresses resistance, recovery, emotion, and symbolism. Each pattern reflects a specific place, person, or narrative. Her work is rooted in the belief that fabric can hold memory, and that through stitch, we can connect, question, and remember. It is both personal and political—a quiet protest sewn into the seams.
JOSEPHINE EDWARDS
Josephine’s motivation for work generally comes about from an impulse to become involved with the creative process itself, with a sudden excitement to "play" with shape and form, pattern, and colour.
Inspiration can be set off by any manner of things, usually visual, informing a compulsion to re-arrange perceived and imagined images in one’s own order. A long-term interest in the decorative arts, design and dress can have an element of influence in some form. Certain environmental and social issues can also resonate. Work is mostly intuitive and once a piece is commenced, progress then follows its own direction. Chosen media can also be stimulating and varies depending upon available at-the-moment working spaces, from the kitchen table to a professional studio environment.
ANITA BRUCE
Anita is a textile and mixed media artist; the current focus of her practice is tapestry weaving. A background in zoology informs a fascination with biodiversity and the fragile balance inherent in the natural world. Her connection to nature is through a sense of place, particularly the fauna and flora rich nature reserves in her locale. These are significantly personal places, familiar and comforting in an era of climate anxiety. She aims to distil their essence in her art.
Anita’s recent series, ‘The Washes,’ explores her local flat, low-lying landscape shaped by centuries-old fen drainage. From ground level, only dykes and fields are visible, but birds eye views reveal the Fens’ true nature. The Washes, periodically flooded to safeguard farmland, and Fen islands are gradually returning to native habitats as reserves. Anita’s tapestry weaving distils the Fens’ grid structure into woven works that blend subtle colours, evoking the landscape’s shifting moods rather than directly replicating it.
TANSY BLAIK-KELLY
Tansy’s love of hand stitch, texture, geometry, and symmetry are all evident in her work. With her magpie-like hoarding of offcuts and haberdashery, Tansy has a seemingly never-ending pick & mix of inspiration for her work.
A former career in theatrical costume, and haute couture in London’s West End, has helped influence, yet simplify, her minimalist and graphic design aesthetic over the years; her beaded and embroidered gowns have adorned celebrities and royalty on many a red carpet.
JUDITH ISAAC-LEWIS
Judith’s creative practice explores her attachment to significant places in her life. Personal and collective memories linked to her South Wales heritage are of particular interest. Inspiration also comes from her immediate environment, especially her garden and the local area where she now lives in Hertfordshire.
Her present concern aims to create a sense of place in her practice directly connecting the work to the surroundings. To do this she is embracing materials that are found on her doorstep to create natural dyes and botanical contact prints. Through this use of natural and found materials she is aiming to work more sustainably reducing her impact on the environment. Hand embroidery is a core part of her artistic vocabulary. She explores how hand stitching enhances wellbeing through its calming rhythm. Her embroidered pieces develop organically, shaped by ongoing adjustments. She values the portability of hand stitch, carrying it from place to place.
Jackie’s work over the last few years has been split between exhibiting and working on large ecclesiastical commissions. Her subjects range from personal experience of tragedy and togetherness, the landscape and the environment, nature, and its challenges. Stories from history, her passion for the movement of dance, and the aesthetic beauty of religious iconography.
Jackie’s approach to any new project is completely open minded. She researches each subject deeply and through the exploration of various textile techniques and mediums, along with the use of printing, drawing, felting, dyeing, and photography endeavours to capture the essence of her chosen theme. She works with a range of fabrics from rich silks to old and recycled or even eco dyed cloth, along with a large and varied range of threads. Jackie does not limit herself to any sewing techniques or to any form, employing both hand and machine embroidery in both 2D and 3D. Her work is generally graphic in style.
SAVE THE DATES
Prism is a vibrant group of 66 textile artists dedicated to exchanging ideas, developing skills, and exhibiting work at a professional level. Membership callouts take place every two years.
Learn more about our mission and upcoming opportunities by clicking here.