Out Yer Tree Walk and Talk

Yesterday saw me at the Walk and Talk event for the Out Yer Tree contemporary art exhibition at Coombe Abbey Country Park near Coventry where I have three pieces of work installed.  Come with me as I drag you round my work....

Following on from my original Suspended re:Purpose work at the Out Yer Tree art exhibition at Lickey Hills earlier this year I started working on similar pieces using cassette tape.  The same friend who gave me the massive stash of video tapes gave me a goodly amount of cassettes too so I set to dismantling them and claiming the tape.  One of the good things about cassette tape is that it comes in both black and brown, the brown yields a good variety of shades too.  The cassette pieces are constructed in the same way as the video but I used a variety of found objects to attach the tape to.  I had two old style metal doodads that cover the top of stench pipes which are a great shape, a plastic drip tray from a bar, part of a decorative copper dish, a metal bangle and two random metal rings unearthed from the debris on my studio workspace!

On installation day I wanted a smaller more intimate place for Suspended re:Purpose 2 (yep, I named that uniquely didn't I?  lol) and I chose a lovely cedar tree facing a large open grassed area containing three other artworks. The cedar had a ready made aperture with beautiful criss crossing branches and I hung some of the smaller pieces outside of that area, hopefully leading the eye into the pieces hung in the interior. 

                                             

 
On reflection I wish I had created more than the seven pieces I used but I was happy with the placement and the way the work looked.  When we checked the work before the Walk and Talk yesterday I was disappointed to find one of the pieces had disappeared.  One of the others had been tied in a not too.  In the 40 minutes between checking the work and getting back there to talk about it another of the pieces had been tied in a knot too!

I have to admit I really don't mind the knotting (although we did later unknot them before we left), the pieces are there to be interacted with so I have no complaints but it's disappointing when the work is just ripped down.  One of the exhibition organisers, Taz Lovejoy, had one of her pieces pulled down and thrown in the lake within three hours of it being installed and it was hung 5m up in a tree, they're very determined artwork wreckers apparently!  It's the risk you take hanging work in a public space though and it won't deter me from exhibiting again although I'm considering creating a piece using barbed wire!  lol 

                                                    

Suspended re:Purpose 2 was the first of my pieces that I had to speak about at the Walk and Talk.  It would be fair to say I was so nervous at the prospect of talking to the crowd of 40+ people that I wanted to turn tail and run away!  I have no idea what I said and I think I probably gabbled my way through it somewhat but I did it!  ;o)

 

                                    

Next up was my original Suspended re:Purpose piece which I rehung for his exhibition.  I chose a lovely plane tree to hang the piece in this time, it has nicely overhanging branches and the pieces are hung relatively low so they can be got amongst and interacted with.  Taz told me a lovely story yesterday and I'm sure she won't mind me sharing it with you... on Friday when Taz was at the park a lady with a new born baby was in amongst my work and was moving her baby in and out of the video tape.  ;o)  If  all the pieces get yanked down and wrecked it will all have been worth it just for that moment.

                                      

Two of the pieces had to be rehung since installation day and on our pre check run yesterday we discovered one had been pulled so hard it was hanging on by a thread so that was rehung too but none have yet disappeared as they did at Lickey Hills.  There's evidence that several have been seriously hung on ~ stretched video tape rolls itself into a fine tube, I was quite pleased to discover this and am planning some pieces with purely stretched tape so I can at least thank the wee vandals for that if nothing else!  ;o)

I took a video of Suspended re:Purpose on installation day and, ably assisted by my lovely daughter, have edited it and added some music.  The work doesn't look like this now because of the rehung pieces but this is what it originally looked like.

                                

I think it's a great idea to video work in situ like this especially if it transpires to be the only record of how the work looked when first installed!  I will definitely try to remember to capture any future work hung in public spaces.

                                       

My third piece in the exhibition is Pods re:Versed.  I got quite caught up in the idea of constructing natural forms from unnatural materials recently and decided to create some cocoon/pod like structures to hang at Coombe Abbey.  These babies are a little more unfriendly than the other pieces in that they have some pretty sharp edges so I wanted to choose a location where they wouldn't be too accessible as I didn't really relish the prospect of anyone lacerating their hands on them!  I eventually settled on hanging them in a beech tree overhanging the edge of a lake which is behind a sturdy fence.  On installation day I had my poor husband with one side of the ladder in the water reaching as high as he could whilst wobbling about looking in danger of plunging in at any second!  Meanwhile I stood behind the fence giving him "Left a bit, right a bit" style instructions!  ;oD 

                                              

This location is quite gloomy which to my mind suited the whole concept of the piece.  I will definitely continue to explore this theme, I'd like to experiment with more open pods.  Nests also appeal to me, I can just picture a massive video tape nest structure high up in the trees.  ;o)

At the end of the afternoon, as we trolled back to the visitor centre, the heavens opened and we got absolutely soaked!

  

                                                

                                                

Even the downpour didn't dampen our spirits though!  ;o)  Despite my nerves I really enjoyed the Walk and Talk.  It was great to hear some of the other artists talk about their work and I think it was a very successful event.  There's a great variety of excellent work in the exhibition and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.  The exhibition runs until 17th September, please do visit if you can! 

Out Yer Tree Installation Day

Saturday saw me and my long suffering husband installing my video tape extravaganza at Lickey Hills Country Park near Birmingham for the Out Yer Tree outdoor contemporary art exhibition which starts this weekend.  It was a glorious day and the park is a lovely place with fabulous views over the surrounding countryside.  We met at the visitor centre and then set off to walk the route of planned exhibition area to choose where we would all like to exhibit our work.  The park is mixed woodland but has alot of pines with tall straight trunks and I was looking for a tree with more horizontal branches for my work. Quite early on I spotted an oak tree that I thought would be ideal. 

On the way round the park I spotted several other possible trees but they were in the more open areas of the park and I wanted a location which was more enclosed and my first tree remained the front runner!  None of the other artists favoured "my" tree so no fisty cuffs was required to secure it!  lol  So, we set to and started to install.  There was a smaller oak next to my tree and I initially thought I would hang in both of them so we started by hanging a few in the smaller tree but ultimately I decided I wanted them all in the one tree.

The hanging itself was pretty straightforward, not knowing in advance what size branches we would be hanging the work from we had taken two methods of suspension, bike spokes and chain!  The majority of the pieces were hung using the bike spokes.  This heavy metal could be successfully bent around the branches and through the swivel hooks of the baskets.  The chain was only needed for the branches which were too thicker to use the spoke method on.  Each of the baskets hangs from their original chains attached to a swivel hook which I added so they turn freely and without tangling the chains up.  The position of the branches meant a few of them needed some minor adjustments to the chain length.

It really was a two man job as most of the branches were higher than could be comfortably reached and required a ladder and a nimble husband to hop about the tree!  I think my husband heard "Can you reach a bit further?  Just a bit more...?"  a few more times than he wanted to!  lol  After lots of adjustment and readjustment all of the pieces were in place securely and my husband was still in one piece too!

During the time I've been making these I've only had one or two hanging in the garden and seeing all 10 hung in the tree exceeded my expectations, the light playing on them through the trees and the sound of all of them rustling in the breeze was fantastic.  It's really difficult to capture moving video tape in a photo though!   

I hope these images give you an impression of the piece but, of course, the best way to experience the work is to go and enjoy it in the flesh as it were!  ;o)  Most of the pieces hang low enough to be interacted with by visitors and I hope they will get amongst them and really enjoy them. 

The exhibition runs for three weeks and I'm looking forward to seeing how much the pieces evolve over that time.  The process will be dictated by nature and I have no real idea of what will happen which is a very exciting part of the work. 

 

The exhibition opens this Saturday (29th May) with a Walk and Talk event at 2pm where all the artists will walk the route and each talk about their work.  Alot of the artists were still installing when we left on Saturday so I'm really looking forward to seeing and hearing about all the other artwork, it should be another exciting day.

Now you see me, now you don't

Having completed the last of my hanging pieces for Suspended re:Purpose this afternoon I set about tidying the studio, and yes, I can actually see the floor again now!  ;o)  I'm selling at Mildenhall air base tomorrow, Thursday and Friday so I spent the afternoon organising jewellery and display stands and rounding up all the assorted paraphenalia I need to take.  I have some pendants to finish this evening to add to my display tomorrow.  As I was finishing my last basket my eyes lighted on a half completed assemblage piece on my desk and inspiration on completing struck me.  ;o)  All the time I was on Warfarin last year after my PE I diligently collected the blister packs from my tablets and by the time I got the all clear to stop taking them I had a carrier bag full and an urge to make some art with them.  ;o)  This is the resulting piece:

"Now you see me, now you don't"

The blister packs are attached to board from a fabric sample book cover with brass drawing pins and acrylic paint applied over the top.  The video tape is my trial run of the text for my RA Summer Exhibition submission, Her Honesty and Her Pain.  I was playing with my heat gun to see how the tape reacted.  ;o) 

Caught on Tape

Heading into a busy week and thought I'd share some images of my progress on my assemblage pieces for the Out Yer Tree outdoor art exhibition at Lickey Hills Country Park.  My studio is slowly disappearing under video tape, tape reels and empty cassettes as I edge towards completion of the dozen hanging pieces!

I'm really enjoying working with the video tape although it can become a bit hard on your hands after a while and a video tape cut is akin to a paper cut, ooooooooouch!  I'm progressing well with the dozen pieces though and only have two to complete in readiness for installation day next weekend. 

 

The piece is entitled Suspended re:Purpose and comprises the 12 pieces all constructed from used and, in some cases VERY well used, hanging baskets and copious amounts of video tape.  I wanted to explore the idea of intentionally placing a man made material in the natural environment in a constructed form.  The video tape will inevitably deteriorate and "evolve" over time with nature dictating the process.  Once hung the tape creates ever changing fluid forms which reflect the light beautifully.  I have had one hanging in my garden all week and it is a constant source of interest, watching the movement, changing colours and patterns in the light of different times of day is very absorbing.  I love the contrast of seeing what I consider a beautiful object in a lovely setting but it's made from a material that will challenge alot of people's acceptance of artwork made with, to say the least, non traditional art materials!  Like them or loathe them, I hope viewers of this work will find it thought provoking and worthy of discussion.   

I want to continue to explore and experiment with video tape and, excitingly, I have been offered a solo exhibition in a local venue and my thoughts are all leading toward a body of work to exhibit using video tape.  Watch this space!   

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!).    

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)

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2010

At the eleventh hour I decided that I would submit some work to the RA Summer Exhibition again this year.  With barely a fortnight between making the decision and the deadline for submissions I paid up and set to work!  My current squeeze is video tape and I wanted to use it in both my pieces.

"Wound Up" 

My first piece is a sphere constructed entirely from video tape and mounted on a vintage table mat.  I used eight reels of video to make the ball which is just over 2 miles of tape!  It's a simple piece, tactile and reflective, with a whimsical side to it.    

"Her Honesty and Her Pain"

 

With my second piece I wanted to combine assemblage and writing in an artist book.  I altered the book by creating one deep niche to house the writing and using acrylic paint and inks to change the appearance.  The text is written on video tape with white chinograph pencil.  The tape is affixed to the book at one end only and sits in the niche in a jumble.  To read the text the tape must be handled and untangled.  The text is my own words and reads:

"She felt her honesty and her pain. The honesty came first, crashing in unexpectedly, in the early hours of the morning, a tsunami of raw emotion. She laid very still in the vast bed, feeling utterly alone. The gentle breeze from the open window caressed her bare skin, the kiss of the outside world on an intensely private moment. The honesty weighed heavy, sank into every part of her, filling every pore, colouring her with pure truth. Her mind became crystal clear. The pain came later. It hovered menacingly for most of the day and then swooped in abruptly without warning. It crushed her, squeezing the breath from her lungs, leaving her gasping to be healed. The wounds opened easily under the pressure, fresh fierce pain forcing itself in against the flow. They had arrived now, her honesty and her pain, together as one, as surely as she had known they would."

Photos courtesy of Rob Morris.

 

 

Life Drawing

I thought it was time I got back to some creative blogging!

I've been going to a local life drawing class for well over a year now and in that time I've tried different media such as pencil, pen, watercolour and pastels.  When I started at the class my first favoured medium was charcoal and a fortnight ago I returned to using it after a lengthy gap and fell in love with it all over again.  ;o)  In terms of technique, I don't think I've made much progress over this past year which is probably due to the fact that I rarely find time to practice between classes (much as I'd like to!) but it's always good fun and I do enjoy being in the company of the rest of the class who all have very different styles.  Here are two of the charcoal drawings from a fortnight ago:

For all these drawings I used charcoal and some white pastel and used a foam make up brush doodad to blend.  I have no idea about charcoal techniques and really should have a punt about online for some ideas of what I should be doing!  In the meantime I'll busk it and continue to have some fun with it!  ;o)  One good technique I have down pat is the application of copious amounts of charcoal to my face during the process of trying to get some of it on the paper!!  lol 

Man and the Environment Exhibition

The Man and the Environment exhibition, for which I had two pieces of work selected, opened at The Forum in Norwich last Tuesday.  On Monday evening there was a private preview event which I attended with my friend, Kath.  Kath was responsible for initially forwarding me the email with details of the exhibition without which I wouldn't have submitted my work so she had to be my "plus one", of course.  ;o)  The excitement started before we even reached the exhibition though!  On our way in to the underground car park at The Forum we were greeted with a big display board over the entrance featuring, among others, my piece, Tragedy! 

Tragedy had already been featured on The Forum website and the flyers for the exhibition but seeing this large scale piece of promotion was fantastic!  And it get's better!  After we got out of the car, I was absolutely thrilled to see a huge wall poster for the exhibition featuring just my piece!  Excitement overload!  ;oD

The exhibition organisers have told me I am welcome to have the poster after the exhibition is over which will be a great keepsake even if I haven't got enough wall space anywhere to put it up!  ;o)  Upstairs in the exhibition itself my other piece of selected work, Every Possible Mistake, features on on of the display boards and Tragedy is on several digital screen displays!

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one artist to take, the day after the preview I discovered my Tragedy piece is featured in a news article on the BBC website!  ;o)

The exhibition itself is full of fabulous contemporary artwork.  I feel honoured to be included in such a great collection of work.  It is all excellently presented in the space and well worth a visit although I am slightly biased!

All the images (apart from the two smaller ones) were taken by Rob Morris.  Thanks, Rob!  ;o) 

This has been such a good experience and a great start to 2010 for me.  ;o)

100 Sq Ft Exhibition

Next month I have a piece of artwork being exhibiting in a novel art exhibition in London.  It's called the 100 Sq Ft Exhibition and is made up of 100 pieces of artwork all a square foot in size.  This is the second year the exhibition has been organised.  You can find out more here.  This is my piece:

It is entitled A Deeper Incision and is an assemblage of a found rusty nail, tiny bottle, vintage resistor and brass panel pins on recycled wooden board layered with acrylic paints and inks.