Alison Mercer's talk and slide show was truly inspirational and her witty observations often had us in stitches ( pardon the pun!). She lives and works in Wales and is currently artist in residence at Ysbyty Gwynedd. Working in a hopsital environment allows her to work with patients and staff and much of her work has been in the maternity department working with new mums. One of her more unusual projects involves working on used breast pads to make an installation.
The driving force behind her work is the need to discover who she is and why stitch is important to her. A recurrent theme in her work is her ancestors, as part of the process of discovering who she is and she often uses text and images to explore this. More recently the birth of her daughter and motherhood has provided inspiration for her numerous sketchbooks and stitched work.
Alison has a wonderful website http://www.alisonmercer.com
