Entry from 02 September 2012

After getting my name added to the ‘artists’ waiting list for the Windsor Emporium back in August I was really excited when a spot became free for the September event and said 'yes' to Jackie immediately. Excited - and a little bit apprehensive as well if I’m honest as I hadn’t expected a place to come up so soon and didn’t have a lot of stuff ready to exhibit or got the things that I needed to display it nicely on a table. A few emails later and Lis and Jules’ both gave me some ‘top Emporium tips’ and my initial panic reduced considerably!

I ‘borrowed back’ my remaining original pictures from Emerald Gallery and Cath also kindly helped me get organised by ordering some easels, archival tape for fixing prints and a portfolio / browser from one of her suppliers.  I borrowed a large table covering from the Art and Crafts Society to go with a couple of smaller vintage table clothes that I have and emptied some storage baskets to provide some height to my display – and after a few frantic evenings of hand embellishing prints and making cards I was ready to go (thank goodness it all fitted into my Smart car).

It is a strange sensation to be sat at a table while people walk by a look at your art - and one that I am still a bit shy about. I’m also learning the best level of interaction as some people like to be spoken to, but others just like to look. I am pleased to report that my work seemed to raise more smiles than frowns so I’m taking that to be a good thing.

Jackie had a great mix of exhibitors this month and there were tables of antiques and vintage treasure alongside hand made bags and cushions; scented hand printed pillows; silk kimono-style tops and scarfs; different original art styles; different original jewellery styles; photography and next to me gorgeous scented candles and votives.

I recognised one ladies work from a Collective Art in Marlow show a while back but hadn’t had the chance to speak to her. Lesley De Matos under the name of Country Girl Corner had an array of shabby chic fabric gifts ranging from Kindle covers to soft toys to framed embroidered pictures that I just loved – and if it hadn’t been the wrong side of pay day for me I could have done some damage!

http://www.countrygirlcorner.co.uk/index.html

I also got chatting with another artist called Leigh Glover who had one of his works accepted for the BP Portrait Award last year – what an achievement given that thousands enter and only 55 were chosen for display.  The Emporium is a relatively new venture for Leigh and he has found it an effective way to raise awareness of his art and visits to his studio in Perivale.  I told him that my studio is my kitchen table that I aspire to have a ‘proper’ studio like his one day!

http://leighglover.com/index.htm

I was also pleased to be able to meet Caroline Crawford – a new ‘Emerald Gallery Girl’ who had a large display of work at the entrance of the Emporium.  I had seen Caroline’s work at Cath’s earlier in the week when I had picked my paintings up – and it was nice that she recognised my work from visiting Cath's too.

http://carolinecrawfordart.4ormat.com/home

My brother Jamie and chum Vicky popped in to say hello in the morning and Cath and Ann visited in the after lunch which was lovely.  4.00pm came around much sooner than expected and it was time to pack everything up. I am so grateful to Ben for helping with the bag carrying up and down stairs and ferrying to and from Windsor.

There is still a waiting list for dates for the rest of the year – so fingers crossed for another vacant spot in the not to distant future . . .

For more information about Windsor Emporium please visit the website or facebook links below:

http://www.windsoremporium.co.uk/

http://www.facebook.com/WindsorEmporium

Entry from 24 August 2012

I can’t believe that it’s been three months since our last installment of crafty fun at Steph’s – just where does the time go?

I always stop off at M&S in Risborough on my way over to Aylesbury and buy a couple of tubs of chocolate naughtiness as a ‘craft table treat’ for after tea. This time I decided to get two tubs of the caramel crispy bites as Steph’s daughter Annabelle and me are addicted to them.  When Annabelle opened the door, I showed her what I had bought and she squealed with laughter (the most delightful giggle you have ever heard) and said that they had done the same and we now had FOUR pots to consume . . . oh my.

Steph had made a lovely photo album for a friend who had recently had a baby girl. This was full of cute little pink teddy bears that had been hand stamped and coloured. During the evening she made a ‘Brag Book’ to take for the new Grandma to pop photos into so that she could keep this in her bag to share with chums too.

Tamsin had some fun decopatching an old vintage map onto wooden shapes to make brooches. She had bought some crackle glaze and inked over the top of this, once dry, with our favourite Tim Holtz’ Distress Inks to give a more worn effect.  We decided to conduct an experiment to see what different effects we could get with some of the mediums that I had bought along: Glossy Accents, Crackle Accents, Distress Stickles in Picket Fence and Rock Candy – the results were interesting!

I spent the evening hand stamping sentiments onto some old book pages in readiness to make some cards. I also OD’ed on the aforementioned chocolate treats . . .

Steph finished the evening with a demonstration of guilding with Flitter Glu and guilding flakes using one of my Bo Bunny stamps of a crown. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t used my guilding flakes kit yet and this has inspired me again to have a go!

By the way, we didn’t eat all of the caramel bites – only one pot (honest).

Entry from 5 August 2012:

One of the many things that I learnt about in Jules’ Print Shed (see earlier Blog entry) was that both Jules Rumsey and Lis England regularly exhibit their work at the Windsor Emporium. The Emporium is run by Jackie Couzens and is held on the first Sunday of the month from March to December upstairs in the Guildhall in Windsor. It’s an ‘emporium of art, crafts and objects of the extraordinary’ with a Vintage Tea Room selling fabulous cakes.

http://www.windsoremporium.co.uk/

I had not come across this before and agreed with Cath that we would go and visit Lis at the event in August to find out more. Cath had a ‘surprise’ weekend in Dublin sprung on her so I headed along on my own to find out what it was all about.

The Guildhall is a very grand building up by the castle on the High Street (opposite Cath Kidston / TK Maxx) and you have to ascend an impressive stone staircase to gain access to the Emporium.  The room at the top of the stairs, on this Sunday, held an impressive display of vintage treasure which was a delight to look through. 

The main room houses some fine art and chandeliers which set the thirty or so table/ stalls off the great effect.  There was a range of art and crafts on show – along with antiques and more vintage wares.  Lis’ table was in the smaller side room which was also home to the Vintage Tea Room (how she managed to resist all of the cakes and goodies I have no idea). The stained glass windows in this room are stunning.  It was great to see more of Lis’ lovely pictures painted on old book covers – and to see the finished version of ‘To the Lighthouse’ that we saw at Jules’.

Lis had kindly shared my website with Jackie and said that I may be interested in taking part in the future.  We shared a pot of tea with Jackie who told me more about the Emporium and said she thought my work would compliment the Emporium and would be happy to add my name to the ‘art’ waiting list – how exciting!

There are some lovely photos of the Emporium's facebbok page in the August Album on their – especially look out for Lis’ picture of her darling little Scottie dog.

http://www.facebook.com/WindsorEmporium#!/media/set/?set=a.403570379704865.90538.128697570525482&

I have been visiting the Summer Exhibition at the RA since the late 90s. I introduced my brother Jamie to its delights about five years’ ago and it has now become an annual pilgrimage for us – apart from last year when we turned up a day too late (still can’t work out how we managed that!)

We are creatures of habit and like to walk down Marylebone High Street and stop for a coffee enroute.  A couple of years’ back we stopped off at Starbucks as usual and my brother looked ahead of us in the queue and turned and said to me “Look at the state of him – who does he think he is - Rod Stewart?” at which point we took a closer look and discovered it was! 

This year, with the Olympics being on, London was transformed with flags and bunting galore and there was an exciting buzz in the air.  We encountered a number of the one-eyed Olympic mascot creatures called Wenlock (what are they supposed to be?) on our way down the RA and came over all touristy and had to take photos of ourselves standing next to each.

The courtyard at the RA housed a sculpture by Chris Wilkinson RA entitled ‘From Landscape to Portrait’ (£180,000) which was a series of large wooden frames rotating from, yes you guessed it, landscape to portrait format which was really effective. Jamie and I had fun taking photos of the shadows it cast and our reflections in the metallic sections.

This year, the Small Weston Room which is usually filled floor to ceiling with small works, was given over to a film installation which meant that the smaller works were displayed in one of the larger galleries. This gave a completely different feel to the exhibition space and I hope they repeat this hanging format in the future as it was much easier to see and appreciate the works this way.

I was naughty and took a photo when the steward wasn’t looking as three of my favourite works were conveniently hung next to each other:

‘Holding myself together so far, and no significant bleeding’ by Effie Jessop (catalogue 190; £600) was an image of a woman constructed from tiny hand embroidered letters on linen – it must have taken hours.

‘Peg Tapestry’ by Annie Morris (catalogue: 191; £6,000) was an assemblage of pegs painted with oils and then clipped on to chicken wire – the colours and combinations were lovely. Annie had a larger ‘peg work’ work in another room where she had drawn a woman on each watercolour painted peg – the scale of this work was vast and it had sold (£40,000).

‘New Zealand’ by Matthew Corbin-Bishop (catalogue: 192; £1,600) was a mixed media representation of a postage stamp – this caught my eye as I love to use stamps in my mixed media works and seeing one on this scale was fab!

The other work that I loved was ‘Larousse’ by Alexander Korzar-Robinson (catalogue: 523; £2,000 and featured on page 65 and 66 of the illustrated guide). This was an old encyclopaedia which had been cut into to reveal colour and black and white pictures from the pages inside the book – a bit like a theatre set. This was a very effective dimensional piece.

As usual there were works that made you scratch your head a bit and others that were truly inspiring. And, as usual, there were more in the former category than the latter (£66,000 for a flashing green neon sign that says’ ‘Dogs’ anyone?) But I guess it is the juxtaposition of these works next to each other that make the Summer Exhibition such a great place to spend a few hours and to keep coming back to year after year as you never know what wonders you may discover – and it certainly provokes some interesting conversations!

The Summer Exhibition is I believe the world’s oldest open art exhibition and I would love to have a work accepted and shown here at some point in my life. But in order to get a work accepted one has to submit a work first and that’s a step too far outside of my comfort zone for now . . .

Below are some of the RA and Olympic-themed photos from our London jolly.

 Last Thursday night (19 July) I had the most fantastic evening and met some more lovely artist makers care of an invite to visit Jules’ Print Shed. I first met Jules Rumsey at the end of June when she kindly chauffeured and gang of us up to the Oxford Print Makers Cooperative.  At the end of that evening she extended an invite to Cath (Emerald Frames and Gallery) and Ann (Picture this Art and Framing) to come and visit her ‘Print Shed’ where she produces her collographs.

Well, this invite soon extended to a couple of Jules’ arty chums from the village, Eliza (who I found I had met before at Emerald on my open studio day) and Lis. The remit for the evening also transformed into a wider ‘show and tell’ event.  After a couple of glasses of Prosecco in the kitchen (what a treat on a school night!) we marched out down the garden followed by Dylan the Tibetan terrier and passed by two normal sheds before reaching THE Print Shed.

Jules has transformed her shed (more of a cabin I’m sure you will agree) in to a glorious light an airy working space and although she joked that it didn’t always look this tidy, (and whose work space ever does all of the time?) she had all of her materials stored and labelled in what looked to me a very organised manner – she had lots of lovely scrap papers too that I would love to repurpose in my work. . .

We indulged in some delicious canapés and then our host talked us through how she makes her collograph print plates which was fascinating. Jules’ skill with a scalpel is second to none and the details and textures that can be created through cutting down into mount board and layering papers was amazing. Jules also places PVA wood glue in dots, lines and patterns to add a resist over the paper which helps creates highlights and myriad of textures. Jules also uses textured papers, fabric and even dried plants to add layers to print from.

Another technique using a firmer board/wood base is to use grout and carborundum powder mixes to create layers that can be drawn into while wet and further distressed with a blow touch to create a super bubbly texture – Jules showed us a particularly fine looking crab that had been created in this way!

I have not seen collograph plates before and they truly were works of art in their own right and I would happily of had any number of them framed ‘as is’ on my wall.  Because of the impermanency of the materials used, each print plate only has a life span of 15 to 20 prints at most, making them precious commodities.

In the slide show that follows I’ve tried to capture the stages of inking up, printing and the final reveal!  I didn’t use a flash and so some of the ‘action’ shots have a natural softness of focus about them – rather than indicating the Jules’ works in a blur (or my intake of Prosecco!)

Next up on ‘show and tell was Lis England (a new Emerald Girl too!) who shared with us some exquisitely detailed gouache paintings that she produces on book covers. Again, I have never seen anything quite like these before and what a great idea to ‘up-cycle’ old unloved books and transform them into works of art.

Lis showed us how she sews the pages together after splitting the book in half (that way she can get two paintings out of one book) to enable them to be cleanly mounted and framed. Lis shared a picture of a robin, some dapper gents in bowler hats and a lighthouse which was stunning. She also bought along some greetings cards that she produces that had an image of her cute dog and another of Windsor Castle.

Lis also told us about the Windsor Emporium that she and Jules take part in on the first Sunday in the month. In short you can book a table upstairs in the Guildhall and there are a variety of artist makers along with antique stalls. I’m putting the first Sunday in August in my diary now to go and see and find out more!

Eliza Leftwich (a soon to be Emerald Girl we hope?) didn’t bring any work with her this time, but does pen and ink drawing and is currently working on a series of work based on British wildlife – the hedgehog is next!

Eliza bought one of my Prom cat cards from Emerald and said that it inspired her to have a go at scanning and manipulating her detailed drawings in new ways – how fantastic to have sparked some new creativity! Eliza popped into Emerald when I was doing my Open Studio day as she was keen to learn what type of paper and ink I used to reproduce my cards as she wanted to try and get the same ‘chalky’ effect on hers. We had a great chat and I sent her off with a long list of things to look for. It was lovely to meet her again and find that she is getting on well with the Jessop’s papers too.

Jules had an example of an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ inspired card that Eliza had made featuring a beautifully drawn and hand embellished hare. The hare was layered in front of an ornately drawn frame and there was poetry/text behind the frame to highlight the hare – I really should have taken a picture as my explanation doesn’t do justice to the lovely imagery.

Last on the bill was me. I took along my ‘suitcase full of gorgeousness’ – a small old fashioned leather case that I paid £1.99 for in Oxfam, filled up with a very small (tip of the iceberg) selection of the kind of materials that I like to use to construct my work from. I had produced some step-by-step photo boards for the Open Studios day and so talked the girls through these – although Jules was ahead of herself and kept asking questions that would be answered later!

I didn’t take any photos of all my stuff in the Print Shed which was a shame and maybe I will take some soon and showcase my suitcase in a future blog entry? The girls were certainly intrigued as to where I got a lot of my stash from. I did offer to take them shopping some time – but entering the world of craft products is a dangerous path to take and not for the feint hearted.

The thing that made the evening so special for me was being able to talk, laugh, share and learn from other artist makers who are producing new and exciting contemporary work. We were all on the same page with our passion to create things and are all keen to explore new opportunities to share our work - and that brought an exciting energy to The Shed. I know I’ve said this before, but since meeting Ann and Cath my arty horizons have been widened so much and I continue to meet such fantastic people. I am so grateful that Cath acts as a catalyst to make introductions that lead to new friendships.

The ‘art of the possible’ is easier to achieve with arty chums than on your own – so fingers crossed that this was maybe the inaugural meeting of the Emerald 'Art Shed' Collective?

On Thursday evening (28 June) I was privileged to be able to accompany the Cotswold Branch of the Fine Art Trade Guild on a visit to the Oxford Printmakers Cooperative in Tyndale Road, Oxford.  The OPC is an open access Fine Print workshop that offers fantastic printmaking facilities:

http://www.oxfordprintmakers.co.uk/frameset.html

The lovely Cath at Emerald is the Chairman of the Cotswold Branch and had told me about the trip when we were setting up Bucks Open Studios. When she said that our chum Ann (Picture This Art and Framing) was going too, I jumped at the chance to book a 'guest' place.  One of my colleagues at work, Warren Ralls, is a master print maker and so it was only right that I invited him as well as it sounded right up his street.

Cath met another Chalfont based print maker through Bucks Open Studios, Jules Rumsey, who specialises in collographs and invited her to join our merry band. Jules very kindly offered to chauffeur us all on what had to have been one of the warmest days of this year so far!

In all there were seventeen of us, a mix of artists and framers (including Stuart Hibberdine who won the 'Best Mount Design' in the recent Guild competition), plus Louise Hay who is the CEO of the Fine Art and Trade Guild. We knew it was going to be special - but none of us realised just what a treat we were in for.

Six artists kindly gave their time to demonstrate a range of printing techniques to us:

Betty Ebanja (relief printing)
Patricia Drew (mono printing)
Jenny Lines (colour etching)
[Tea break!]
Keith Isaacson (preparing and printing stone lithographs)
Heather Power (screen printing on glass and paper and etching)
Morna Rhys (three plate colour etchings)

With the kind permission of the Oxford Printmakers Cooperative I was allowed to take lots of photos of the artists at work and will be popping a disc of these in the post to them as a 'Thank You'.

The rest of this post is split up into a series of slideshows, by artist, that demonstrate some of the stages of their chosen print 'technique' for that evening. The slideshow can be paused, if needed, as some of the commentary is quite long!

Unfortunately (unlike my boss), my brain is not the size of a planet and I apologise if I have got terms wrong or misunderstood what I have been told or heard - if I have made a mistake please do let me know and I will happily update this post. 

The evening, as you will see, was fascinating and I learnt a great deal. I have had a go and doing (very) simple mono prints in the past, and may have done (very) simple lino cutting and printing at school, but had no experience of the other techniques being shown.

I learnt that I while I may not have the patience for producing a lithograph at this point in my life; I loved the immediacy of the screen printing. I also loved the 'physicality' of the machinery and the efforts that went onto turning the wheels or levering the presses to produce such amazing results. One thing that will stay with me forever is a new appreciation of print making which will help me, the next time I look at an etching or the like, to truely understand how it was made - and for that knowledge I am truly grateful.

As an endnote, it should be made known that I found it really hard to motivate myself to go to work the next day as all I really wanted to do was get in the car and drive to Oxford to learn more and have a play!

Note: In some cases I have taken photographs of finished works produced through the demonstration process. Images of the finished articles are of course, copyright of their respective creators.

General pictures

Those of you who have seen the crafting stash in my kitchen (or read previous blog entries) will have noticed that I have a bit of an obsession with Stickles Glitter Glue, whether this be the original or the Tim Holtz 'distress' varieties.

It is a rare thing for a card or piece of art to escape the inclusion of a little bit of sparkle and I prided myself on having a pretty comprehensive collection of colours - or that was until I popped in to the lovely Arty Crafty in Godalming at the weekend.

I couldn't believe my eyes with all the colours on offer.  The problem was because I have so many it was difficult to know for sure which ones I already had!  I picked five that I knew I definitely didn't have and will compile a list so that I can be better prepared in the future and pick up any missing ones when I next visit.

The only other problem I have (apart from being a few pounds poorer) is where to store these new little gems . . . ?

Last Friday was that special date on the calendar known as 'Crafty Friday at Steph's'. It's been three months since I got together with Steph, Tamsin and Karen and that has seemed a really long time.

Once food was out of the way, including the scrummy strawberry based pudding, it was time to clear the table, break out the wine and chocolate and knuckle down to some serious crafting!

Tamsin had managed to to stab herself in the hand while gardening the previous weekend and had a puncture wound that had been super glued back together (it was under a dressing and not on display thankfully!).  This meant that she couldn't easily make the jewellery that she had planned and so Steph gave her a copy of Tim Holtz' first book to look through.

For those seasoned crafters amongst us, we all know the delights of Ranger products (just how many times have I mentioned Stickles glitter glues on this site?) and the guru of all things grunge and distressed in the Ranger product line is Tim Holtz.

Tamsin was reading up on the 'distress crackle paints' and it stated that you can "use this on paper, photographs, grunge board, wood - infact anything that you are fed up of looking at and want to change".  At this Steph said jokingly "Like Stuart?" (her hubby) at which point more than one snort of laughter erupted from around the table.  We all had visions of Stuart falling asleep and then Steph creeping up on him with all her Tim Holtz products (and she has plenty) and 'distressing' him!

Steph's daughter thought that this was really mean - but the vision will be there for ever more now.  It still makes me giggle to think of it - what 'distress' method would one employ - crackle paints or an alcohol ink patina I wonder?

This is a belated entry from the 17 June. I have had PC issues this week and sadly missed the boat to share this in 'real time' as Bucks Open Studios finished today.

17 June 2012

I spent today with Cath over at Emerald Gallery - along with a Smart car full of my mixed media 'treasures' to share with visitors so that they could better understand how I go about producing my pictures.

I've mentioned before that I like to take step-by-step photos when I work and decided to nip in to Jessops in the week and get a set printed so that I could display them on A2 size foam boards.
Being an 'open studio' event I also printed some pictures of my studio space (my kitchen) to show that you don't need to wait until you have a 'studio' to be creative.  It also showed that when I work  I use the cats scratching post platform as an extra work surface!

The photo below shows some of the items that I brought along - plus, if you look closely, the fab biscuits that Cath provided along with lots of cups of tea to keep my crafting energies up!

We had a steady flow of visitors and it was great to meet and chat people about what I do. It was really lovely that some of my chums from Marlow Art and Crafts Society popped in (Wilma and Alan and Janet and Joe) to give their support too - thank you it meant a lot.

At the end of the day I dropped Cath off home, but not before a short break in the journey to take a look at some very fine fellows!

Taking part in Bucks Open Studios has been a really positive experience and I have met some lovely artist / makers as a result. It has reinforced in me that making things makes me happy and it has really encouraged me to try and work out a schedule so that I can do more.

After all of the excitement yesterday morning learning that my pictures had sold from the Marlow Exhibition, I had a fabulous afternoon helping Cath over at Emerald Gallery to get ready for Bucks Open Studio - the private viewing of which takes place this evening!

I say 'helping' in the loosest of terms. I learnt that I am 'not yet competent' at putting hooks in the right place and should not be left alone with a hammer as tried to knock a nail through a brass fitting which was never going to happen! Cath on the other hand was more than 'competent' and by the time I left, all the pictures were hung in collections 'by artist' and looked great.

I don't want to steal Cath's thunder on the picture front so will just share one shot here - as I'm sure not many of us will have seen the gallery space in this 'minimalist' state before . . .

Looking forward to meeting the other artists this evening over a glass of wine - and wish everyone a successful show!