Case Study - Helen Greensmith

Helen is a textile designer with a focus on making commercial products, including scarves and accessories. 

Helen’s business ‘Helen Ruth’ is a luxury accessories label specialising in digitally printed silk and wool scarves, and accessories, printed and hand-finished in Scotland.

Each scarf starts with original hand-drawn illustrations, usually in pen and ink. These artworks are then converted to digital files to be coloured, repeated, mirror imaged, collaged, and combined with found imagery and photography to create the intricate and layered prints of the scarves.

Designs are inspired by the wild Scottish landscape and animal life, as well as fairy tales and traditional folklore.  Each scarf tells its own story – a well known and loved tale, an old saying or a personal childhood memory, giving the wearer an emotional connection to the piece.

Jenny Hood’s practice is 2D paper based and she also creates digitally created photographic works. 

Helen and Jenny had completed a project before and had really enjoyed working together. When applying for this VACMA award they had been talking for some time about working collaboratively again.

Helen says, “Jenny is more fine art based and I am more design and product based, so we wanted to work on something together that allowed me to be freer, less sales focussed and think about different concepts, and for Jenny to learn a bit more about digital print and textiles. We wanted it to be a mutually beneficial collaboration. 

We didn’t have an outcome in mind but wanted to experiment and explore techniques.” 

Helen received the funding to work on a collaborative project with visual artist Jenny Hood that would allow them both some time and space to work together on a textile-based art project, moving away from a sales mindset and instead allowing themselves freedom to explore techniques, ideas and develop their skills. 

The intention was to work collaboratively from the outset, to develop a body of work that would take the form of textile art or a wearable artwork. 

They used the award to buy materials, textile screen print equipment, and studio time at Peacock Visual Art.

It also funded some digitally printed textiles so they could explore screen printing onto the digitally printed base fabrics. 

“I personally wanted to use this project as an opportunity to push my textile design ideas beyond my usual work practice and instead develop prints and textiles with an experimental aesthetic using screen printing, painting, collage, applique and hand embellishment techniques to enhance my digital work and think in new ways with regards to my everyday practice.”

The VACMA has positively impacted the creative practice of both collaborative partners.

Working alongside each other they were able to learn from each other’s practices. 

Helen says, “I felt I delved more deeply into the research and development stage of the project than I would do with my regular practice, as time is always so limited. I felt I approached it in a much more experimental and playful way.  It gave us the freedom and time to explore ideas we wouldn’t normally have the freedom or time to explore and its inspired me to think about being a bit more experimental and introducing fine art-based ideas into my work.”

Jenny had limited experience of digital print, and Helen was able to assist her development of ideas to fully capitalise on this new medium for her. Jenny now hopes to try to apply for funding to expand on this new direction as an alternative method for presenting her works. During the initial stages of lockdown, Jenny began drawing again, a practice she had left behind in art school. Jenny’s drawings became a large part of her contribution to the project, and she felt it gave her a secure space to explore and develop her style and ideas in a way that felt purposeful. 

Helen adds, “Working across new mediums was challenging for both of us, but we were able to guide and inspire each other through playful experimentation without feeling the pressure of ‘getting it wrong’. We now both feel more equipped and confident to move forward with these new techniques in our own practices, as well as continuing to work together in future to build on our shared skills and ambitions.”

Helen has gone onto produce a limited-edition scarf adding in some foil hand embellishment that was inspired by the project.

“I realised I don’t need to have a full print set up at home to be able to produce this work. I needn’t be put off working from home, I can just go for it.”