The Yaffingale Flintshire, United Kingdom

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Ali Pickard The Yaffingale is interested in history and modernity, which stories get to be told, and who is telling the tale, both within fiction and society. She works with craft techniques within fine art sculptures and likes to mix wood and metal with fabric and embroidery

Ali Pickard trained in Metal Art as part of a women into non-traditional skills project in Edinburgh, where she then spent many years as part of a Women’s Welding Collective, creating intricate and time-consuming sculptures and bespoke furniture. She likes to melt hot metal, and embroider delicate fabric, tell stories, create characters, and make things move. She’s interested in history and modernity, which stories get to be told, and who is telling the tale, both within fiction and society.

Now based in North Wales she works with craft techniques within art sculptures and likes to mix wood and metal with fabric, often with some automata movement in the pieces. She spends many hours hand-embroidering or welding tiny pieces of metal to create texture, or tell a story. Her artist’s name is The Yaffingale (which is an old word for green woodpecker)