Cecilia Stephens studied Woven and Printed Textiles at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts followed by an ATC at Goldsmiths. She was married in New Zealand to an Irishman and spent a year travelling home via Australia, Indonesia, India etc. They settled in Northern Ireland, moving to Portaferry in 1978. Cecilia is a member of Seacourt Printworkshop, and Ards Arts Collective, and regularly exhibits in exhibitions with both organisations. She holds an exhibition each summer in her studio in the loft of the corn mill beside her house. This exhibition is part of the Creative Peninsula, open studio, event.
In 2003 Cecilia was awarded a travel scholarship for a self-arranged residency to Pyramid Atlantic Studio, Washington DC, to study papermaking.
I have always had connections with the sea, and have for the last 30 years lived on the edge of a tidal inlet of Strangford lough; but where-ever I have lived it has been on an island and I have become increasingly interested in the boundaries between land and sea, the edges. I work as a weaver/ painter/ printmaker, and colour and texture and the way light falls inform my work.
When I went to Kenya (it was only for a week), I found myself drawn to the different ways that compounds were encompassed, so that the boundaries were marked with a hedge of jacaranda trees, or a fence of rough hewn planks, or even a line of cactus plants,
each area seeming to have its own idiosyncratic method of defining the edge of territory.
The sea and shore are my ultimate edges, and here beside my home those edges are indistinct as the salt-marsh flora creep ever wider towards the tidal influx, but it is the variety of levels and the textural qualities of each that fascinates me and that I am wanting to depict in some manner to express my sense of home.
I would like to make handmade paper from a variety of plants from my environment, which will be constructed in such a manner as to portray the subtle layers of growth, and the textural qualities of the tidal deposits that are thrown upon them. The sheets, I hope, will become my boundaries.
The papermaking project at Neri started quite by accident but I embraced it with alacrity. I was glad to be able to share my knowledge with the women of the project and in arriving at the solution of these stacked bowls Annabelle and I discussed my wish to portray edges, and it seemed to us that the bowls, when stacked could do just that, showing off the textural qualities of each individual piece while building columns that can define space.
