Working Studio

Last Saturday I attended a talk and discussion at the Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts UEA given by Polly Binns,Rod Bugg and Barbara Taylor. It was quite an interesting and exciting discusssion about the importance of having their working studios at home as well as how the location of your studio can affect our work.Polly and Robb have both been Higer Education Tutors and both said that it was essential to them having their studios at home. It was also fascinating to hear from Barbara who is a curator and has been for many years working intially at Bury St Edmunds Gallery. I also found it particularly interesting to hear how she saw a connection in Polly and Robb's work and brought the two artist together to facilitate a collaboration of their work. In total they were only about 25 - 30 people in the space. I did enjoy the slide presentation and seeing Polly's work in progress. Looking on from the outside I believe that whatever the result is with their collaboration, a book or an exhibition, it will be worth seeing. There is also a Henry Moore Textiles Exhibition on 22June - 29August .http://www.scva.org.uk/exhibitions/forthcoming/?exhibition=77

Invasion

Melissa has begun developing her ideas for the photos and I am impressed with her plan to include the distortion aspect into the work. She has done some sketches and samples showing ideas for further development and some of them are quite interesting. Selena was happy to be rid of the makeup and by the end of the photo session had had enough of Melissa "bossing her around." It was wonderful.

Today I have done some stitching and a lot of experimenting with materials. I am posting this piece of work called Invasion which was done quite a while ago, there are some similarities between this piece and that which I am now working on.

My time has been spent dyeing fabric and enjoying the bright days. The great weather has helped with the creative process in my household too as my daughter Melissa has taken wonderful photographs of her sister Selena as inspiration for her GCSE Art project and they are so fantastic I have to share them. My dyed fabrics are boring to compare will show them later. Melissa did the makeup on Selena too as part of the creative process to convey the artistic quality needed for her piece called reflection and distortion.

New experience Old work

Today I visited the Imperial War Museum in London with my daughter Melissa to research the effect on women during World War 2 for her GCSE History. It was a great outing and Melissa got a lot out of it, she had visited previously with her class and loved it enough to encourage us to go with her again. It is not often that we have the opportunity to spend time with only one of our four children so we jumped at the idea. There is so much information there and some of it quite emotive. With his military background Dave was also in his glee. Overall I would recommend a visit to the museum especially the Holocaust exhibit.

As I have not had time to continue developing my recent idea I thought I would have a browse through some of my work done a while ago to share with you.

The Days of my Life

What great weather we had yesterday! This made us all expect that today would be a scorcher. Dave decided to re-cover the roof of my studio (he loves DIY) as the old felt was no longer any good and he had spotted a small crack in it. He went off to the DIY shop bought heavy duty roof felting, some tar like paint and 400 special nails ( he does not need that many). He took off all the wood trimmings and the felt from the "Bad Half"of the roof. He then of course grew a bit tired and thought that he would complete the job today. Well it has rained all day and my studio has no roofing felt on it at all. If there had been a leak it is definitely bigger now. (Smile)