The Textile Centre in Blonduos
The Textile art residency is held in an old girls’ school in Blonduos in the north of Iceland on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. Within the building there is accommodation for residents, a kitchen, dining room, shared bathrooms, a large studio space for general textile work and, on the upper floor, a loom studio. The residency is right next to the Blonduos Textile Museum, which is open to the public during the summer but by appointment the rest of the year.
Views from the building look out over the town to the mountains in one direction and across the wide Blanda river to the sea on the other side. It’s a stunning landscape wherever you look!
After a couple of days of settling in and investigating the local area we have begun exploring ideas and materials. One of our first finds in the studio was bags of sheeps’ wool available for us to use; in one bag the blackest of black wool. Three of us are making use of this already! It is raw wool so has to be washed several times to remove dirt and the strong smell of sheep. But its colour is so reminiscent of the dark lava seen on a visit to nearby basalt rocks and our local black sand beach at Blonduos – it is so definitely a colour of Iceland
