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Background
Many of
the members of our group first came together several years ago as
students in a City & Guilds Part 1 Embroidery class at East Berkshire
College in Windsor, tutored by Jan Beaney and Jean
 Littlejohn. Like so
many that had gone before, we were inspired and amazed by the Windsor
students’ annual exhibition, and we wished we could enter that circle
and thereby acquire at least some of the ability to magically transform
humble threads and cloth into powerful and imaginative visual images.
Although over the years some dropped out and others joined the class,
eventually the ‘hard core’ graduated in 2001, each with a Diploma in
Stitched Textiles.
The whole process
from start to finish had taken six years, and over that time, a very
diverse group of individuals had got to know each other, encouraged each
other in times of creative (and domestic) crisis, and eventually learned
great respect for each other’s talents and abilities. It seemed a shame
to let all that disappear after the final graduating exhibition, so we
got together and decided to form ourselves into an exhibiting group.
And in honour and
acknowledgement of how far we all felt we had already travelled, and our
conviction that the future was a journey that held great potential for
discovery and achievement, we decided to call ourselves ‘Odyssey’.
It was a scary moment. The
realisation sank in that now we were on our own – Jan and Jean and our
other tutors at Windsor had withdrawn their guiding hands, and we would
have to take our next steps unaided. The time had come to put all we
had learned into practice, so we all took a collective leap over the
edge. We booked our first exhibiting venue, signed the contracts and
committed ourselves to putting on a joint exhibition for autumn and
winter 2003. As well as scary, it was exhilarating, a lot of fun – and
we haven’t looked back since!
The strengths of our
group lie in our shared history, our willingness to support each other,
and our diverse approaches to textiles. By continuing to meet regularly and offer
critical support to each other, we hope that we will be able to continue
to develop our skills and expertise in order to explore further the
expressive potential of textiles.
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