Browse our full directory of Worcestershire-based artists and makers. Members who took part in Art Week 2025 are marked with a yellow venue number beneath their name and description. Members without a venue number are part of our organisation but did not taking part in Art Week 2025. We are launching our new 2026 membership and Art Week registration on 14th February. You can download the 2025 digital guide HERE.
Jo Raynor
Art Forms
Mixed media, Textiles & Needlework
Artist information
I was a graphic designer from 1979 – 2008, then a lecturer at Stourbridge College of Art until 2023. I now work as a textile and mixed media artist, exhibiting and running workshops at a range of venues.
I create textile collage with hand stitching, using recycled fabrics, dyed with plants, ice dye and rust. I also incorporate found organic and rusted found objects such as nails, washers, twigs and leaves.
My mixed media work also involves collage: utilising found documents and ephemera, old maps, images from reference books, handmade, silk and painted papers. Occasionally, I speed things up by revisiting my design skills and working digitally.
I gain equal satisfaction from hand rendered and digital collage – but all stitching has to be by hand. I can’t abide working on a sewing machine!
Coming from a design background, I have no desire to express myself through my work – in fact, that would make me pretty uncomfortable. I prefer to communicate ideas or messages. I set myself briefs – there’s the designer again, and the lecturer, too. I find a subject that intrigues me –Witch trials, the Boglands of my home country, Ireland, Japanese Boro style, Piers Plowman on the Malvern Hills, the journey from seed to flowering plant – and carry out research, before representing what I have learned – generally in abstract form.
Running workshops allows me to share the peaceful, calming effect of handling natural materials and the meditative nature of repetitive stitching – and cake!
https://www.instagram.com/jo.raynor/