Imagine Falmouth 2022 Public Choice Prize winners are Jocelyn Lane's 'Cake Toucan' and Sue Spence's ‘Dandelion (What The Bee Saw)’ 

The two winners came joint 1st place with the same number of public votes

Jocelyn Lane (under 12s category)

Jocelyn's 'Cake Toucan' was inspired by the shape of the found scrap wood- an off cut from a kitchen counter. Painted like the layers of a cake with sprinkles and at the bottom a paper casing.

Sue Spence

“I am a self-taught textile artist, inspired by memories of places and people, literature, and the natural world – particularly trees, flowers and the seashore – to tell stories in stitch. 

I work mostly with old and used materials: vintage fabrics and threads; reclaimed and recycled resources; paper ephemera, stamps and found objects, aiming to buy new – and waste – as little as possible. I hand sew these treasures into stitched collages with a strong narrative, often including text.  

Recently, as with my piece ‘Dandelion (What The Bee Saw)’, I have embroidered my own poetry in my work.”

“‘Dandelion (What the Bee Saw’) was made for Lydia Needle’s 50 Bees project, as the companion piece to her needle felted bee, Nomada Signata, and exhibited in Fifty Bees 5 at AceArts in Somerset in spring 2022.  My preparatory research revealed the importance of dandelions to this tiny British bee emerging in March. Infra-red photographs of the familiar flower showed striking red/pink centres where pollen and nectar are situated – guiding bees, which see wavelengths imperceptible to human vision, straight to their food. This fascinating knowledge inspired me to write the poem in the central panel of my triptych, styled in the style of an old fashioned sampler. All three panels were hand-stitched freestyle on vintage French linen tea towels, with old Sylko sewing cotton. Flanking the poem is the dandelion plant in mirror images: as seen by human and bees’ eyes. Templates for the cotton scrim leaves were created from dandelions in my son’s garden. Only three basic embroidery stitches are used in the piece: straight stitch, cross stitch and French knots.”

The Imagine Falmouth 2022 Judges' Prize Winner:

Jasmine Blackmoore's 'Mycelium Song'

Judges Ro Robertson and Lucy Stein chose the video piece 'Mycelium Song' as the prize winner for this year's show.

The Imagine Falmouth 2022 Judges' Prize Winner is Jasmine Blackmoore's 'Mycelium Song'.

'Mycelium Song’ invites you on a journey to discover the ‘Wood Wide Web’. The video piece explores the underground network that mushrooms use to communicate with each other. This immersive body of art transports viewers to an unseen underground world where fungi, trees and plants network through a vast entanglement of roots in the soil beneath our feet. The video's music is made using natural found objects and electronic devices to create a soundscape which builds and ends with an intense symphony of organic synthesised noises. Mimicking the electrical impulses sent by mycological organisms, imagining how that may sound.

The Imagine Falmouth 2022 Young Artist Prize Winner:

Samuel Norris's 'The Haymaker'

This photographic print was taken in Coombe and has been manipulated with a double exposure effect to include a self-portrait of the artist.

'For my work ‘The Haymaker’ I used the photographic technique 'double exposure’ by overlaying two images, one a portrait of myself and one of the cornish landscape near Coombe. Once overlayed, I was able to manipulate the portrait into position so it blended into the landscape with the eyes fitting above the hedgerow and the mouth behind the hay bale shadow, with the headphones framing the figure as leading lines. I was inspired by Dan Mountford‘s double exposure work which was the basis for a large part of my coursework at school and one of my chosen photographers to study. Along with the stunning Cornish landscape being inspiration enough.'

– Samuel Norris