Sandra Gruescu is a handweaver and a painter. She is passionate about weaving and makes both practical fabric for clothing, scarfs and kitchen towels as well as woven artwork. She loves that the principle of warp and weft and throwing a shuttle is the same as it was thousands of years ago, even if looms have become more sophisticated. She works with silk, wool, paper, cut up photos and many other materials and enjoys experimenting with ways of combining weaving and painting.

 

Sandra Gruescu started her weaving journey in 2014 at the Handweavers Studio and Gallery in London in a weekly weaving class. She was so engaged with weaving that she joined the Handweavers Diploma course completing it in 2017. She mostly uses her eight-shaft Ashford table loom and her four shaft Glimakra floor loom. She works with a variety of long-established weave patterns as well as experimental woven structures. Woven pieces can be decorative or express deeper feelings, and Sandra’s works explore both aspects. She likes repeating traditional patterns while using more unusual yarns and exploring new materials and structures. For the latter she designs on a computer as well as with pencil and paper to come up with new patterns.

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Since completing the Diploma, Sandra Gruescu has been a full-time weaver with several solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Great Britain and Denmark. These include with the London Guild in 2017, and two exhibitions at the Handweavers Studio and Gallery, 2018 and 2019. She was one of the weavers commissioned by Dutch artist Sanne Vaassen to reweave the flag of the European Union for Vaassen’s solo show ‘Surplus to Purpose’, Unit 1 Gallery, London, 2019. Sandra held a solo exhibition of her weaving,’Threads of Life’, at Bistro Coccorico, Copenhagen, 2023, and has contributed to group exhibitions in Copenhagen. She showed at the Whitchurch exhibition in 2024. She is a member of several weaving organisations, the London Guild of Weavers, the Dansk Tekstillaug and Weben+ in Germany. She is co-founder to the Gemini Art Group (GAG). Sandra loves exchanging knowledge and project ideas with other weavers as well as textile artists. She is very happy to be part of the Seven Sisters Handweavers group and is looking forward to more joint projects and exhibitions in the future.