Some exhibitions begin with a theme. Others begin with a place. Spinning Yarns began with a friendship.
More than 20 years ago, three art teachers from different Glasgow secondary schools found themselves working together as tutors on Glasgow City Council’s residential summer schools.
For generations of young artists these courses were a formative experience, bringing together creativity, conversation and community. Long after the courses disappeared through funding cuts, the friendships they fostered remained.
Rosann Cherubini, Hazel Guy and Gill McBrier each continued to journey along their own artistic paths while pursuing careers in education. Although they shared a passion for creating and for teaching, their work evolved independently: Cherubini through expressive ceramic sculpture, Guy through layered mixed-media compositions, and McBrier through richly textured landscapes that combine watercolour, thread and stitch.
It was only when they exhibited together earlier this year that something unexpected became clear.
Spinning Yarns
Viewed side by side, their work revealed a common thread, woven through their different mediums. Each artist, in her own way, was telling stories. Not necessarily stories with clear beginnings and endings, but narratives built from memory, observation, imagination and lived experience.
The exhibition that followed found its title almost effortlessly. Spinning Yarns captures not only the act of storytelling but also the pleasure of lingering over detail, allowing a tale to unfold gradually and discovering meaning along the way.
The Artists
Gill McBrier spent her career teaching craft and design until 2024, when she began to focus full-time on her artwork. Gill draws upon landscapes that have shaped her life, transforming memories of coastlines and open countryside into contemplative works rich with texture and stitch. Her paintings invite stillness, encouraging viewers to reconnect with places that restore and sustain us. Jill says: ‘It is the space and solitude of the countryside which I aim to evoke; an emptiness where only the wind, grasses, sea or streams provide the soundtrack, inviting the viewer to relax into that sense of place’. Gill’s gift of being able transfer that sense of calm to canvas is mesmerising.
Through her work with mixed media, Gill explores texture through her use of paper, tapestry, thread and watercolour.
Hazel Guy is an artist who also captures moments, stillness, memory of lives past.
Her skill in recognising and recording these elusive moments allows the viewer to contemplate. Birds, doorways, keys and snippets of overheard dialogue, explore how ordinary places and fleeting encounters quietly accumulate in our emotional memory.
Of her subject, Hazel says: ‘I am drawn to mundane domestic – scaled buildings and structures which become symbolic and powerful where we relate them to our cultural psyche. The relationship which is created as we move through them often leaving no trace of the time we have spent, or the happenings therein.’ Hazel’s focus on doors and stairways reflect so much more than the physical structures. She sees these as symbolic of the metaphysical: the transition of life, those who have been, those who have yet to come.
Rosann Cherubini’s ceramic sculptures are populated by enigmatic characters whose stories evolve as she builds them.
Combining humour, symbolism and intricate surfaces, her work ranges from whimsical reflections on human nature to powerful responses to conflict, displacement and social injustice. Her latest works have been inspired by vintage circus performers and ballet dancers of the 1950s. Rosann also takes inspiration from places – whether it be home or away, undulating countryside or rugged coastline. Of her process, Rosann says: ‘I have always used stories to build my works around. The narrative flows between myself and the piece. Works organically grow as I use smaller pieces I have made or found pieces to adapt and ‘grow’ each piece.’ The end work is an evolution, often, as Rosann notes becoming a response to global events.
Slow Contemplation
What unites the three artists is not simply their shared history, but their belief that art can communicate in much the same way as conversation. A sculpture, a stitched landscape or a mixed-media assemblage can all become ways of telling stories that words alone cannot fully express.
In an age that often rewards speed and instant consumption, Spinning Yarns asks something different of its audience. It invites us to slow down, look closely and spend time with works that reveal themselves gradually. Like any good yarn, these stories become richer the longer we stay with them.
Spinning Yarns
iota Unlimited Studios
15th- 23rd August.
