Sharon Mossbeck was one of four artists awarded a Microgrant earlier this year, receiving up to £500 to develop her practice & increase public access & engagement with her work.

This year, our Microgrants form part of the city-wide Year of Making celebrations aiming to promote Sheffield as a city of makers.

"I’m Sharon Mossbeck and I’m one of Yorkshire Artspace’s Year of Making artists. I have a studio based at Exchange Place Studios in Sheffield city centre, which I share with fellow artist Michael Borkowsky. I’m a conceptual artist, which means that the ideas behind my work are more important to me than the finished work itself.

I make work based in themes of death and inspired by religious imagery, often mixed with scientific or medical imagery. Iwork in a variety of different ways, from paintings to sculptures using found objects. I also use cross-stitch, and I am passionate about looking again at cross-stitch as a form of contemporary fine art, rather than a rather twee form of traditional craft.

In 2014 I began a project called The Thread of Life, in which I invited members of the public to create their own piece of cross-stitch work from a pattern I had designed based on a strand of DNA. The idea is that the DNA strands would be as individual as the people making them.

The project was inspired by the Three Fates from Ancient Greek Myth, who together are said to spin, measure and cut each person’s thread of life, thus defining their lifespan. Alongside the DNA strands I also created my own large scale, sculptural cross-stitch work [pictured] inspired by the Three Fates and based on a Byzantine church dome. This project is the basis for my Year of Making project with Yorkshire Artspace."

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