Teimlo, 2025

Gan Efa Blosse-Mason a Karina Geddes

Teimlo is a response to Touched by Clare Curneen. These quilts reflect our experience of illustrating on location in the Forest of Dean. Our drawings served as a guide, informing the marks and shapes that make up the quilts design.

A central motif in both Curneen’s work and our own is the clootie tree—a tree, often found near a sacred well or a sacred space, where people tie strings, ribbons, or rags as an act of wishing or seeking healing.

Teimlo embodies the spirit of pure collaboration, with each quilt created jointly by both artists. This cooperative process mirrors the interconnected, community-driven nature of trees within a forest. The quilts function as portable, interactive clootie trees, inviting people to participate by tying fabric, adding ribbons, or stitching their own wishes into the piece.

As quilts, these artefacts can naturally evolve and grow through public interaction. This continuous transformation reflects the themes of reclamation present in Curneen’s practice, as well as the hidden, intricate networks of woodland ecosystems.

This was a funded project by Celf a Cyd and Oriel Davis see https://celfarycyd.wales/cynfas/article/2800/Teimlo/