Catching Up

I've been a busy bee the last few weeks so lots to catch up on! 

At the end of April I took part in the Scrap Heap Art Challenge as part of the North Norfolk Earth Day celebrations at Deepdale Farm, Burnham Deepdale on the Norfolk coast.  The basic idea of the gig was to go along and spend the day creating art from scrap materials.  My friend, Kath, and I arrived on the day in glorious sunshine (it stayed that way all day!) and met up with the event organiser, Andrea Bramhall, and the other artists, John Colahan, Sarah Caputo, Karen Harvey & Karen Fevyer from Atelier East and Karen Steadman, in the courtyard where we were to work. We drew lots out of the hat to decide who would work with which pile of materials and this was ours:

We weren't given any information in advance about the nature of the scrap materials we'd be working with and I have to confess that I was expecting smaller, more "domestic" items such as CDs, paper goods, packaging, textiles etc so wasn't quite prepared for barbecues and bike wheels!  Tool wise, I'd gone prepared for smaller stuff but fortunately our nearest neighbours, John and Karen S, had a wide range of tools and were very generous with them.  ;o)  After period of perusal, deconstruction began....

Kath and I spent the morning working through our many and varied ideas, using the groovy old record player as the base for our piece.  Sometime around lunchtime I had brain freeze and Kath had to removeme from the scene of the crime for some light relief in the form of a veggie sausage roll, salad and a hot chocolate!  ;o)  After this respite, with an accompanying discussion of what we wanted to convey with our artwork, we set to and romped through the afternoon constructing our piece, Portals to Future Past...

In brief, we wanted to create a piece that addressed the vital importance of recycling in today's world but also a piece that connected the past and future, showing that we can learn from the thrifty and resourceful ways of our forebears and apply them to our present to create a sustainable future.  Portals to Future Past.

The day was a great success, all the artists created fantastic and very different pieces from their scrap.  I found it challenging but fun to work with a restricted range of materials in a set timeframe and would certainly do it again. ;o)  This is the winning piece, the fabulous Contemplating Colin, with his creator, Karen Steadman...

The work is on display at Deepdale Farm over the summer so if you're in the area do go along and take a look.  Big thanks to Kath for sharing the day with me, it was a great experience and we had such a fun time creating together!  ;o)  Also, many thanks to Andrea and her helpers for a lovely day and here's to next year's Scrap Heap Challenge!

My next piece of news is that my proposal for an exhibit at the Out Yer Tree outdoor art exhibition at Lickey Hills Country Park at the end of May has been accepted!  ;o)  This is the first proposal I have made in my art career and I'm very excited to have been selected.  I shall be creating a dozen large hanging assemblage "tassel" pieces constructed from used hanging baskets and video tape...

Other news....I am currently waiting to hear from the Royal Academy of Arts as to whether my artist book piece, Her Honesty and Her Pain, has been selected for this year's Summer Exhibition.  This piece also involves video tape, can you see a theme developing?  ;o)  I am currently creating new jewellery pieces for another jaunt to Mildenhall air base in a couple of week's time and I am also working on a community project in conjunction with Chatteris In Bloom.  We are painting a 40ft long hoarding with a market scene populated by legendary screen stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Laurel & Hardy and Carmen Miranda (on the fruit and veg stall, of course!).