Busy Preparing For Christmas....

Well, I have been working all hours trying to get a whole load of designs finished so that they can be printed in time for me to be making a bunch of different goodies for the baubley Bungay Christmas Street Market. 

I shall be having a stall with my lovely mother-in-law, who is a crafter and whizz on the sewing machine! My creative craftsman father-in-law will have some little wooden carved items on the stall too - if time allows - they still have settling into a new home to do...

Here's a pic of one end of Earsham Street; it's a really pretty, very attractive little town and my in laws have just moved there... So what better way to announce their presence than for them to meet people at the funkily-famous, friendly fair all along Earsham Street.

There are already lots of lovely independent stores and galleries selling a myriad antiques, gifts and art as well as interesting eateries, delightful delis and a hearty wholefood shop

  

from Bells of Suffolk

Cork Brick Gallery

Everywhere you look in Bungay you see pretty vernacular houses and cottages that tell the story of a long history. From the front, my in laws' place is ostensibly Georgian - but some very old beams hint that maybe the facade was added later.

Bridge Street from the hermitage

I found the website of a mother and daughter team Farrell and Holmes, who make beautiful handmade fabric and paper gift items who are obviously way ahead of us (well, me at any rate) - check them out here - they'll be at the Bungay Christmas Street Market too - on Sunday 2 December

And here is a little tiny snippet of some of what I have been working on - but this is not what they'll look like when made into charming cards, bibbling badges, snazzy sticker packs, natty notebooks or tumbley tree bunting - oh my do I REALLY have to do ALL that? In just five weeks? 

Yes, I do

All Hail For Autumn: A Charming Walk...

We had a lovely walk in early autumnal sunshine - it's warmth sweetening blackberries and peeling off my cardigan!
There were fungi everywhere - Fly Agaric and Puffballs in the wooded bit and big brown roundy ones that obviously go crinkly with age, which I don't know the name of out on the heath, embraced by moss and heather:

By the time we got to the lakes - we had passed more red autumn lovelies; shiny rose hips of orange and vermilion, neat and tidy rosy-red hawthorn berries and glamorous back-lit honeysuckle berries. Even the bramble leaves were looking cheeky in splendiferous ruddy redness:

We visited the lakes, collecting suitable stones as we went. Stones are so very just right for throwing into lakes; splishing and glopping deliciously. 

Later we strode purposefully towards home with rose-bud cheeks and blackberry-juice lips! Such is the sweet innocence of an early October walk on your big brother's sixteenth Birthday.

Tiny And Out In The Sticks But Not Insignificant

Had a sweet visit to a most delightful little purpose-built museum for the housing of a collection of all things shell with my lovely colleague and the - all very good at drawing this year - students. 

This pretty Victorian lady with a charming innocent expression stands atop the glass cases with her own glass dome to protect her from the ravages of dust and intrigued fingers

I adore this beautifully crafted collage set on a gorgeous bright coral background sitting squarely between the two places that are artisan and kitch - fab!

It has given me a whole lot of inspiration.... There are little shell characters that remind me of souvenirs from by-the-sea-side holidays too

And lastly - look at these little things - baby toes - oh! Just adorable...the cotton wool...the preciousness of it all!

An Enlightening Talk I Went To This Week....

On Wednesday night I rushed to bath child of three before some zoomy driving to drop off child of fifteen in one end of Norwich to race off to the other side of the city JUST in time for a fascinating insight into the world of artist Ana Maria Pacheco

The very second time I ever visited Norwich was to go to the Degree show of a friend of a friend at NSAD (to which the art school was abbreviated then).
Whilst in Norwich, I went to the Castle Museum and was really moved by a sculpture that was on show there at that time
That was twenty-plus years ago.
The sculpture was entitiled 'Man and his Sheep' and it was by someone I had never heard of before - and a woman artist - Ana Maria Pacheco.

I found the figures at once celebratory and eerie - uncomfortable. They were huge; slightly larger than life hewn from great chunks of wood, then painted, brought eerily to life by the insertion of glass eyes and fiendishly real looking teeth.

I still have such a clear and strong memory of the black clothing looking like charred old oak beams and the white shiny teeth - powerful stuff.

Fascinating to listen to, Pacheco still has a beautiful accent and spoke with such energetic speed that I had to listen extra carefully to hear AND comprehend her lively stories.
From my notes, I can share the following gems Ana Maria Pacheco talked of:
When talking about her upbringing, she explained of the environment - "drawing and drawing to start to understand and love the initially scary landscape"
She said that for some reason art with a figurative narrative can be looked down on as inferior.
Pacheco emphasised that the participation of the onlooker is a big consideration for her sculpture.
She said of her time as head of Fine Art at the art school something to the effect of - I am an advocate for the English art education system.
Her use of printmaking is as investigation or sketchbook and is not prescribing or repeated in the sculpture.
She is interested in the individual and in non conformation.
The nature of the power of women is an important aspect of her work.
She doesn't use brushes in her paintings, preferring cotton buds and 'pads' made from net curtains as there are no brush strokes, resulting in a kind of translucence. Pacheco then sands the paintings and waxes them with beeswax rather than using varnish.
She creates a 'circular narrative where we come back round'
Her work 'The Longest Journey' will be showing at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich in 2013.
Loving the way narratives travel, Pacheco acknowledges our need for a wonderful world of stories that are similar across different cultures - and how her Brazilian heritage had strong oral storytelling traditions.
She admitted she is aware that some aspects of her work are 'not fashionable'

Finally I noted down something Ana Maria Pacheco said that rings so true for me too; this:
"You carry your father - you carry your own history on your back"

This is really good - I did it a few years ago...

AA2A is an organisation that delivers a really good thing.
It stands for Artists Access to Art Colleges, which is sort of a good name because that's what they do - allow artists to access the workshops and facilities of art colleges to explore or develop a particular project.
I went into the intaglio print workshop at the art school in Norwich, which opened a whole set of doors that led to me doing an MA eventually.
Here's the image from the site that shows the colleges that are currently involved:

In order to apply an artist must contact a participating college directly, but hurry! The scheme starts in October...there may be a few places left.

Follow the link - quick-styley - at the start of this post to check out what to do. Good luck!

Off To The Theatre Darling...

Thought I'd post a few of the pieces I have made over the years on the theme of the stage

I enjoy using the theatre as a vehicle for patterns and design; framing a simple concept, dreamlike image or a little story I want to tell...

Below are a drawing, a watercolour, a digital drawing, several collages and painted silk drapes all around the same theme.

Enjoy - and have a great weekend - the blackberries are fabuloso right now....!

Look At Those Chicken Sheds!

Truly charming characters, delicious colour combinations, a great sense of pattern and scale - Mary Blair was an amazingly skilled illustrator. Until recently I did not know the name - nor did I associate the Disney cartoons Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella with Mary Blair.

In this image below, I love the way the logs are placed to draw our eye from the very front of the picture to the dark hair and the concentrating eye of the child, while the upright of the log stack echoes the yellow vertical she is climbing off. The repeats of the flower sprigs delicately pull all the elements together around the composition. The way you have to really look for the ladybird is delightful:

 

By 1964, Mary Blair had moved away from working on animation at Disney - painting 'It's a Small World' for a pavilion at the 'New York World's Fair'. It is a triumph of graphic pattern and colour, with a healthy nod to the folk traditions of Europe. After the fair, it was moved to Disneyland to become the backdrop for a ride there:

One of my Mary Blair favourites is the sweet book 'I Can Fly' which Blair illustrated once she moved on from Disney - to become a freelance Graphic Artist. She captures the way children mimic those around them to gain an understanding of their world. I bought it for reading (for me and for my son!) and seeking out the details in every page never fails to entertain us:

I put quite a few pages from the book here in order to appreciate how the colours and tones provide continuity throughout - yet the weight of pictures changes to keep our interest:

Look at those fabulous chicken sheds! Look at those really chickeny chickens!