Latest Studio Goings On

Over the weekend I worked on a piece of art for a collaborative project I'm participating in with several friends for our friend, Becky.  Becky is in the final year of her HND and is exploring visual dialogue as part of her final body of work.  When she first broached the subject with us she said:  "I've been thinking about how art is sometimes described as a visual language, and how that works. Because it's one thing to make a piece of art that has something to say, but how do you get into dialogue visually? People who critique art always do so in words. How could you critique it with another piece of visual language, and how could someone else pitch in, and the first person reply?"  So, the four of us involved each created a folded strip of card or paper, any size we liked and folded any which way we fancied, created our first piece of "dialogue" on one of the sections and sent it on to one of the others.  We have been working this way since January.  It's been an interesting exercise which I've enjoyed although I have to confess that I haven't always understood my responses to the preceding artwork but I suppose that doesn't matter really and whatever I have responded with has been a true response to what was in front of me from the previous artist.  This is my section in Becky's piece...

...and this is the whole piece so far...

...you will see that everyone else before me has worked landscape but I was moved to work portrait.  I'm not sure if that was my artistic muse or my resistance to following the trend!  ;o)  I'm looking forward to seeing all the completed pieces and I'm hoping to get to Sheffield for Becky's degree show.  ;o)

This week I'm over at Mildenhall air base for three days of selling along with my photographer/artist friend, Rob.  We've been selling at Lakenheath air base for the few two months and are giving Mildenhall a try this month.  The set up at Mildenhall is different to Lakenheath where I have a booth with wall hanging space as well as table display space.  I won't have as much room at Mildenhall so I will concentrate on my jewellery with just a few small free standing assemblage pieces if space allows.  My lovely friend, Kath, has loaned me these little torsos to add a bit of interest to my display:

Although I have been quite successful sales wise at Lakenheath I do think I need to work on how I display my work, make my displays more interesting and attention grabbing. 

This is my latest pendant created from reclaimed necklace and earring parts with some vintage text and vintage copper wire:

  

"Perfect Harmony"

On Friday Kath and I are teaching a jewellery workshop locally for teenage girls.  I love the workshops we do with kids, it's always a joy to see them getting stuck in, using their innate creativity and imagination to create fabulous work and have a fun time doing it.  Working with Kath is the other joy of these workshops, we're a good team and our artistic and teaching styles, although quite different, compliment each other really well.  We always have a good time and lots of laughs on the days we work together.  ;o) 

Reflecting

It was my birthday two days ago, I'm a round number now... 44.  ;o)  I became somewhat reflective on the day following an occurrence which I won't bore you with but the reflection is still hanging about.  A good friend of mine recently posted a really personal insight to their art blog and it made me think about the fact that blogs often just show one facet of a person, not the whole, and I think that my blog definitely doesn't reflect much about who I am, professionally, personally, emotionally, the whole nine yards.  Nowadays I seem to fight shy of blogging about anything other than "hey, look what I did...", I don't record my process or thoughts and feelings behind work or hopes and plans or mistakes or work in progress or experiments and playtime or inspiration or lack of it .  The blogs I love to visit have all of that in abundance.  In blog land, I've become very one dimensional and boring, maybe I have in real life too for all I know.  Time for a shake up.  ;o)