Meet the New DPG Resident Artist

You’ll currently find me in a state of wool chaos – knitting a cumbersome left leg for a full life sculpture of a knitted polar bear, surrounded by three kilos of buttons, a large pile of chicken wings made from drinking straws, boxes erupting with patterned paper and fabrics and six pairs of one metre long knitting needles supporting 10 balls of wool.

My name’s Erica Parrett and I started as The Sackler Centre Resident Artist at Dulwich Picture Gallery six weeks ago. I am an artist with a love of Textiles and particularly that of the knitted variety.

For many years I have been a knitter and stitcher, pursuing my love of making, creating and the idiosyncratic. I leant my needles to illustration before taking a backdoor into sculptural knitting whilst doing a Textiles Degree at Goldsmiths. With an old Brother knitting machine given to me in exchange for child-care, away I went.

Being the first to fill this post was a very exciting and daunting prospect. Having worked in a bustling secondary school Art department for the past two years, I instantly relished the peaceful nature of the gallery and working along side a remarkably welcoming and enthusiastic team has really helped me to grow into the position. It is healthy to challenge yourself and this has definitely been a good one.

To give you a taster of what I’m doing, for the following year I will be running a wide range of arts and textiles based workshops in and outside the Gallery, working with those aged two to eighty two and up! I will be facing a variety of situations such as elderly ladies having a quick nap during sessions, children getting extremely elated with the bubble wrap used in felt making and seeing my little Fiesta loaded to its full capacity with art materials going on an outreach workshop.
Look out for workshops including: Feltmaking, Designing Textiles, Drawing with Wire, Button Mosaics and many more.

It has wonderful to able to meet locals, work in local schools, see familiar faces on my pedal to work and source materials from local suppliers. I hope to see some of you in the Gallery this year.

Erica is exhibiting for Dulwich Open House at the Dulwich Festival on 9/10 and 16/17 May at 182 Court Lane. You can come along and see her work in reality and even buy it then.