For The Fallen performance and banner installation and Walking With Giants Parade

A little bit of a catch up after a very busy couple of months! 

Well the installation of the banners at Campbell park in Milton Keynes started brilliantly. It looked fab and the weather seemed to be contempt (apart from the stakes being stubborn and not wanting to go into the hard, dry ground!). Practice run went great with lots of onlookers, with the rose being edged with poppy filled meadow flowers it looked magical! 

But of course when it came to the real thing, the clouds drew in (as you can see from the panorama below...) and of course the wind and rain came with them. It looked like we might just pull through when the biggest gust of wind swept through and pulled so many of the banners from their posts, all flying through the air just as the heavy music hit in for the performance, and the rain came hammering down. 

People commented on how magical and eerie it was, but of course having the artist head on, I felt the wind and thought of the banners, trying to grab them as they flew through the air, so missed viewing it as it happened! 

All in all though I really did have a fantastic day and great experiences, meeting wonderful people along the way! Thanks to everyone who came and a big well done to everyone who contributed in one way or another :) I've seen just a small part of how much hard work has gone in, so can only imagine the amount of effort from all parties, and in the end it looked amazing!

Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.

Well, this past week I've been in Manchester, house hunting! Eeek :) Looking forward to moving in July. It's getting close now! A brand new beginning.

As well as this, I've been having a gander at places to possibly sell work in the future. I stumbled across an absolute gem, the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. There was some gorgeous work there, and so many opportunities. Two floors of stunning little boutiquey-workshops, as well as an arty coffee shop sat right in the middle, soaking up that buzzing atmosphere. Such an inspiring place, with so much going on! I'm so glad I found it!

So I thought the evenings in the hotel would be a good time to cram work in for my dissertation, so I spent most of my evenings spread out on the bed, typing away and trying to remember where I found the bits of information floating around my head! It was definitely well needed, and I managed to get so much done, I can't quite believe it! 

And of course having our student style, make-shift dinner from sneaked breakfast muffins and butter, with the cheapest ham known to man, and of course popcorn, haha.

At the end of everything we decided to take a lovely country route home, seeing all the natural world again, and finding a fabulous place to have lunch - which did the most amazing puddings! We had to share one and bring a couple home, they were just too good!

And with Easter literally hours away, I'm sure there is only going to be more caloricious indulgence! Especially as I could hardly not make Easter nest cakes now could I!

Happy Easter!

Either I will find a way, or I will make one.

I've been so busy lately, I thought I'd give myself a little break and write a new blog post!

With my head stuck in books and the internet, researching psychology, the unconscious and artists who make work based on it for my dissertation, I haven't felt like I've had any time to think. But of course, being my final year, I have another 6 projects on the go, and it's feeling like an avalanche right now. It's hard enough thinking about 1 project, never mind 7! I think I'm at that point now where I'm forgetting the basics of how to live like a normal human being!

But anyway, I thought I'd show you a couple of stitch pieces I did a little while ago for screen printing which is going towards 1 of my other projects.

I originally sewed the owl onto cotton, but scanned it in and edited the curves and levels in photoshop to make it thicker for putting on a screen (seeing as I'm being taught how to use adobe now, might as well use it to my advantage!).

I quite like that you can't really tell it's stitch, and it looks a bit jaunty - but as usual I just love that it's black and white!

And I'm getting so many compliments on my bee! Originally I made him for yet another project, but feeling under so much stress recently, I decided to drop it, but felt I couldn't just let him come to nothing, so decided to transfer him to my card project - which thankfully I can forget about in 3 weeks time!

Anyone else thinking Christmas is approaching waaaaaay too fast?

Our most beautiful and complex art work we can make are our identities - Grayson Perry

So if you haven't been watching Grayson Perry: Who Are You? on channel 4 on Wednesdays, I don't know where you've been! You've really missed out! But don't worry - that's what 4OD is for.

I've seen Perry's work before, seen interviews and exhibitions, and grew a fondness for him as an artist and a human being. I think it's the way he puts pieces together, and how much he looks into his subject, and the way he has of making his journey through the subject to what interests him about it that inspires me most, and I think this new series really shows that well.

I enjoy the fact that he's been given the honour of presenting his works in the National Portrait Gallery, and one of the first thing he mentions or notices is what it's lacking, and so effectively what he could change with his pieces.

I know Perry has a routed interest in personalities and identities, and now what with me going back to finish my BA degree and getting to get into the subject matter of my own choice for my FMP (and heading down a psychological route), I think Perry has an even bigger influence on me.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

So I started this beautifully grotty half term by being asked to help run a free roller printing workshop in Castle Quay in Banbury with my old drawing, book binding and stamp making teacher Stephen Fowler.

Having not done nearly as much art since graduating as I would have liked, I jumped at the chance, and now knowing I've been accepted onto the top-up BA starting in September, I was desperate to get back into as much creative being as possible.

The day was a blast (and I didn't even mind getting up nice and early on my day off), so many people turned up and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

I'd not done roller printing before, but had done many fairly similar things to it in my time so I got into it really quickly. By using scaffolding padding, a craft knife (or stick on strip padding for the younger ones) and a painting roller, every age and ability managed to leave their mark all over the shop walls!

Although loving getting messy and having such a fun-filled, silly day, I have to admit my favourite part was seeing Dad's desperately trying to get their children to 'try somewhere different now' or asking 'why don't we leave that bit for someone else?' when of course they were having none of it, and had no plan to stop. As well as the wife and children going off to do what they'd come to town to do and leaving dad making rollers and drawing designs for people.

I just thought it was magical, having to glide across ice.

So I've been inspired lately by the Winter Olympics, which I have well and truly become adicted to. I don't know wether it's that the sports are more interesting to me, or the fact there's so much white (and I love simplicity). Anyway I've found so many inspirational lines - especially when it comes to figure skating - that I've just had to do something about it, have an outlet. So here is my outlet...they're only first trials, and of course I can find so many faults in them but I'm so inspired, I think I'll just keep going until I feel they're right.

Every artist was first an amateur.

 

So as I've been having plenty of spare time recently, I decided to try and teach myself something new.

I've always really wanted to be able to crochet as it looked fun (and more modern than knitting), and my mom had tried once to no avail, so I thought out of the hundreds of crochet videos on youtube, one of them had to work for me!

So after watching a few videos, and reading a couple of intro's to 'beginners crochet' books, I just couldn't tell if I was doing it right or not. I mean something was happening...I just didn't know if it was crochet!?

Then I found the one! It was an American guy (without the patronizing/overly excited voice that the others seemed to have) who seems to do videos for a couple of channels ('GoodKnitKisses' and 'The Crochet Crowd'), that were sooooooooooo simple to understand, I got hooked on just watching them all, and started to practice, and finally got it!

So I attempted to do the octagonal motif in one of the books, although it looked a tad different in the pictures in the book, so something wasn't quite right.

So I thought I'd try something a little more difficult, and I noticed it had a stitch in it that I hadn't learnt, so I tried to find the same guy on youtube doing it, but couldn't, so I went to the next best looking video (videojugartscrafts), who right at the beginning mentioned this was the UK stitch, and said what to look up if you wanted the US version.

So I ended up re-learning the names of each stitch (which wasn't so bad as I hardly knew to start), but thankfully all the stitches were the same, just called different things. So I crocheted this rose :)

FINALLY! I think I got it. Now, just got to practice till it's perfect.

It is the nature of the strong heart, that like the palm tree itstrives ever upwards when it is most burdened.

'The Tree of Life'.

So we did this activity at my art therapy class and I just thought I had to share. It was so worthwhile to do, I'd love to start a permanent one at home, but maybe with leaves instead of hearts and doves.

You see, you make the tree, and decorate with hearts filled with positive things in your life/on your mind, and fill the doves with the negative (so they can fly away and take them with them).

It really separated you from your feelings, which was such a relief! You don't realise how much you let them overcome you, and be a part of who you are, no matter how small. It felt so good just to take a step back to see everything in hindsight.

Art in Action 2013

So on Thursday I took my first visit to Art in Action in Oxford.

I'd heard about it from a few of the makers I'd met at the Contemporary Craft Festival in Bovey Tracey, so decided to go along seeing as it was fairly close and the weather was going to be scorching!

Boy am I glad I went! Definitely one to write in the diary for next year. It was full to the brim of inspiration and such inspiring people, and the atmosphere was glorious.

 I absolutely fell in love with Simon Griffiths Sculptures - of owls especially - when I was there, and thought they were so beautiful and realistic! (www.simongriffithssculpture.co.uk)

In fact I seemed to be attracted to watching a fair few of the sculptures in action whilst I was there, I think a really magical thing to watch coming alive.

I don't know how I'd feel doing art live, maybe something to build up to!

Exhibition Take-Down

So on Friday the end of year exhibition at OCVC Banbury, where my Telephone Box has been hanging for the last week, started to be taken down.

My reservations about hanging the fairly heavy telephone box from the hollow ceiling for 2 weeks, now gone. Originally I thought I was going to hate it being hung, but after hours of balancing and sewing fishing wire throughout it, it finally looked the part (even if it did get bashed about by the bustle of people at the incredibly busy Private View a couple of weeks ago).

I don't know what I'm going to do with my Telephone Box now, as it's quite big and takes up a fair bit of space, but I feel it deserves more than being shoved in the corner of a room for years to come. It was one thing trusting the strength of the college ceilings to hang it, but trusting my own at home I feel is a complete nightmare waiting to happen.

Maybe it will become my 5 month old niece, and 34 month nephew's safe place, like everyone who talked to me about it wanted it to be for them, haha :)

Leamington Peace Festival

Last weekend was the yearly Leamington Peace Festival for thousands of people in Warwickshire - a free family festival with constant music, loads of stalls and plenty of food.

I went to sus-out what kinds of things sold well and what kinds of people went as a possible option for me in the future.

I found a stall with these gorgeous rings made from shells, which I absolutely loved! They're so fun and different, I've not seen anything like them before! As I do at most festivals and fairs I limited myself to one purchase, and I dug round these shell rings for a good while until I found one which was more my style with a black and white swirled top - very Tim Burton stylé.

There were some lovely pieces at the Peace Festival as there always is, although I find it's one of those places you really have to root around to find them.

Next up on my Art fairs and festivals radar is New Designers in London in just over a week which I can't wait for. It'll be lovely to see what other graduates are doing.
 

Bovey Tracey Contemporary Craft Festival 2013

So on Sunday I went to the Contemporary Craft Festival in Bovey Tracey, as I went last year and absolutely loved it!

It was the 10th anniversary this year, and there was so much going on. So many beautiful piece to fall in love with, which of course I did!

The stall I kept going back to had some exquisite handbags and purses made with vintage used postcards where the picture was the front and the writing, the back. They had beautiful old style hand-writing and stamps, and are so unique! I ended up spending ages pouring through them (wanting a Blackpool one), and when I got home and read the back, found it was from Joyce and John, who happen to be my grandparents! (http://sarahculleton.bigcartel.com/)

I can't wait for next year to come around so I can go back! But in the meanwhile, loads of people where mentioning Art in Action in Oxfordshire in July, yesterday, so it looks like that's the next thing to look forward to.

Up And Running

In what feels like no time my degree has come to an end! I can't believe the end is now here, after feeling like a million miles away right up until hand in.

As you can see my final piece was this cushdy K6 telephone box, and although there's a good few things I would have done differently if I could (and the worst problems came within the last 24 hours of hand in, and my God was that a long 24 hours!), I am really proud of the final outcome :) and find it's really quite similar to a few older pieces I once did. It is a representation of a small village I know.

Whilst I'm looking forward to the next year of no degree deadlines, I'm also terrified of not being in education for the first time in my life! Although I'm also really excited to be able to start making my own work finally, and the hope is to make, make, make for the next year before I fully get into craft fairs and the like for more of an income. I guess I'll also have to start looking for a little job to keep me going! Lets just hope the motivation keeps on going!!!

In a years time I'm hoping to be accepted to do the top-up course to add to my degree at the same place I did my diploma and degree. But in the mean time I would like to keep my toes in the water by doing evening or short courses to fund my knowledge further within the textiles and fine art world.

Bring it on!