Designing frameworks for participation and co-creation is at the heart of Menna’s practice. Since returning to her hometown, Swansea in 2015 Menna has been building a community focussed practice: partnering with schools, colleges, museums, galleries, theatres, Health Boards and Arts Organisations, projects, driven by a love of storytelling through textiles.
Menna graduated in 2004 with BA Hons Costume Design from Wimbledon School of Art and worked in London as a costume supervisor, dresser and maker for theatre – ENO, Southbank, West End. Building strong foundations in creative solution finding, collaboration, working to commission, she became a skilled fitter and pattern cutter with understanding of fabric. When opportunities arrived, Menna travelled to Nepal, South Africa, India then Central and South America, always captivated by local textiles traditions and the people engaged in them.
Porth
6th February 2024
In 2009 following a year of English teaching in Kerala, Menna moved to Kent and completed PGCE Art & Design. Teaching textiles in schools and colleges then working as freelance sewing tutor in Dublin forged Menna’s talent for skills sharing. Associate artist with Glynn Vivian Art Gallery Swansea since 2016, textiles sessions from printing to visible mending have been shared with families, refugee communities and most recently ‘Threads’ weekly textiles sessions.
In 2020 Menna self taught upholstery techniques, lending tailoring knowledge to inanimate objects. The joy in steaming a repurposed Welsh wool blanket around a wingback chair was a happy surprise. Menna has since collaborated with artists and interior designers to realise large scale technical textiles works – ‘No. 8 Project’ Tamsin Leech-Griffiths, ‘Ways of Working’ Owen Griffiths.
Lead artist roles have led to ambitious outcomes including a giant kite, a 20 meter long ceiling suspending patchwork, 18 months of award winning arts engagement with NHS Staff in hospitals across Swansea with exhibitions, workshops and artist mentoring.
Textiles processes such as hand stitching, visible mending as a means of anchoring, bridging, stabilising, repairing, celebrating imperfections and the way these actions make us feel is of most interest. Menna explores the colour palettes achievable in natural dyeing and cyanotype printmaking, always at peace with blues and rusts reminiscent of the natural surroundings in a seaside city, not far from beautiful Gower.
