Home city debut show for local artist

And the exhibition is one of three exciting projects for an artist who is in the middle of a particularly successful period.

Pip Dickens, an Ilkley Grammar School pupil who went on to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and Leeds Metropolitan University, is showing her work at Leeds University’s The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery this month.

It marks a creatively busy period for the artist who spent last year as artist in residence at the University of Huddersfield, the result of which is a book, Shibusa – Extracting Beauty which will be published by the university next month.

She will also see her exhibition Toward The Light, a solo exhibition first seen at Bradford’s Cartwright Hall in 2010, travel to Cheshire.

The exhibition which Dickens is particularly excited about is the one that opened this week at Leeds University.

“I returned to Leeds in 2003 and lectured on courses at various universities in Yorkshire and Lincoln, while showing in London and in San Francisco,” she said.

“I am very proud to be exhibiting in my home town for the first time.”

Pip Dickens: New Work, which runs at the Burton Gallery until April 14, is a collection of new work inspired by the collection of Kashmir shawls held at the University. The shawls were collected by the university’s visionary Vice Chancellor, Sir Michael Sadler, at Leeds from 1911-23. The original shawls will be on show at the International Textiles Archive until March 30.