Jeni Cairns - Metal Sculpture
Jeni Cairns is an award winning artist and garden designer living in rural Cambridgeshire
Jeni has always been inspired by the natural landscape that has surrounded her most of her life. A childhood spent exploring the farmland, lanes and areas reclaimed by nature have left a lasting impression. Her work has now taken her in a kind of full but ever expanding circle, after experimenting with welding and oxy acetylene cutting while at college and on her dads farm as a teenager she went off to uni to study painting. A move to her grandparents home and a career in garden design bought her back in touch with her love of nature, metal work and sculpture.
“I find the medium of metal a perfect way to express my ideas on nature, there’s a delicacy yet enduring strength and resilience in nature as it always (I hope) finds a way to survive and flourish.”
Jeni studied general art and design at Isle of Ely college and Fine Art at Derby university.
Ditty Dokter - Woven Landscape Tapestries
Ditty Dokter ‘s landscape based tapestries often relate to her Dutch and east Anglian homes; a detail, an element, sometimes a more figurative impression. She uses a range of yarns including linen, cotton, wool, silk, fleece and found objects. Guided by colour and shape, the natural materials aim to evoke the qualities of home and (not) being at home. She initially trained with Eta Ingram, subsequently did the 2 years Westdean college training with Philip Sanderson, followed by specialist courses with master weavers such as Louise Martin. She prefers a more open improvisational weaving style. Some of her work has been completed and exhibited in interaction with performance / film material rooted in migrant experience, such as Come or Go (2018), Fluid Borders (2022) and Mycelial connections over time (2025). Her recent work has focussed on connections through forests and fungi.
Since 2017 she has exhibited with the Riverside Artists as part of Cambridge open studios. She took part in the Eastern Region Textile exhibition in the St Albans museum in 2024 and the British tapestry group eastern region Fenlands exhibition in the Courtyard gallery (Hertford) in 2025. Her work was also exhibited in the Primavera gallery during 2025.