life drawing / zine festival

Coming soon is Birmingham’s first Zine Festival.  It’s a grassroots event that developed out of a bunch of people loving zines and wanting to DO something. Often this ends up with a lot of chatting and nothing happens, but [..drum roll..] the Birmingham Zine Festival is going ahead on 10^th – 12^th September!  Exciting!  Except I’m at a wedding on the 11^th so will almost certainly miss it all.  Boo.  Good news is, I’ll still be present:

Being determined to have SOMETHING to do with the Festival (due to my obsessions with books, zines, print, and anything DIY-ey in Birmingham) I signed up for the Mail Art Exhibition and was sent this blank postcard.  It’s been hung next to my desk for a few weeks and time was ticking by and without feeling at ALL inspired I took it along to a life drawing class that Kirsty and I attended on Sunday – and this was the result!

The mac run an awesome array of creative classes and Team Frilly had been planning on forcing ourselves to make art for ourselves one way or another – as work always seems to take priority/take over.  Shutting ourselves in a room full of studious artists and a naked person seemed like a good way to enforce the spending of time creatively!

Drawing for the first time in a very long time felt awkward.  How to hold the pencil? (loosely, and not like writing) Should I use charcoal? (I forgot to bring any anyway!) Is everyone using colour? (everyone had different tools – I worked in monochrome) Did I remember my rubber? (no I didn’t - annoying!) Will the model mind if I plant myself right at his feet? (he didn’t mind – didn’t even bat an eyelid!)

Everyone worked very differently from one another.  Some just painted.  Some worked for the whole day on one image.  Some explored line and tone and shading.  Some concentrated on detail.  I worked on a range of papers, on one pose and the close up study of his face.  Generally I feel I’ve remembered measuring and checking angles – but I struggled on how to kick start myself  which using drawing exercises might have helped with.

I want to go along to more classes like these, but felt a little bit frustrated by the lack of actual tuition.  I understand that in a one-off session it’s more about maximising your drawing time – so now I’m starting to look at night classes that concentrate on developing drawing skills. 

Kirsty wants to make every Friday an ‘art day’ where we have to concentrate on making things – but I’ve sadly had to remind her that we still have bills to pay/workshops to run/young people to signpost/admin to complete/blog posts to write/emails to reply to/invoices to post/the list is ENDLESS!  So for now, Fridays will just be Fridays - but if anything changes I will be sure to write in gleeful tones all about it.



frilly summer sundays [#2]

Another weekend of working happened in Stafford outside the Shire Hall Gallery as part of the Cultural Olympiad.  Activities happened all across the West Midlands over the Open Weekend of the 24^th and 25^th July – in the lead up to the Olympics, and to celebrate culture throughout the Olympic celebrations.

I worked with Staffordshire Arts Development Team to deliver a workshop creating “mini landscapes” which linked in to two specific themes:

• ‘multisensory’ – I originally worked on the Explore project for Staffordshire Arts and Museums Service where I documented 3 artists working in a multisensory way with SEN schools in the county, and then wrote a supporting guide to working creatively and including multisensory elements within activities.  To continue to raise the profile of the project and the publication, I brought a range of lo-tech/recycled/abstract materials – such as cut up scouring pads, scented j-cloths, tile spacers – and used these as the building blocks of the workshop

• ‘sense of place’ – the current exhibition at the Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford is called ‘Sense of Place’ where six artists have been commissioned to produce new work in response to particular locations across the county.

Using small empty jewellery boxes as base from which to create a mini landscape caused people all sorts of challenges.  What would they create?  Something miniature and detailed?  Something bold and abstract?  A wide panorama? A tiny snapshot of an intimate space?

We encouraged people to consider what fragrances they might associate with their favourite place, what textures might link to the place, and even what sounds.  We’d brought scented oils, scented sand, sand paper, sticky tape, glue, recycled fabric scraps, sticky vinyl, wax pastels, mini Lego pieces, buttons, beads and much much more.  Visitors were encouraged to allow the materials to help shape the place they created as much as bring their own ideas of what they wanted to create to their box.

Next to me in the tent was an old college friend who is also now a practising artist: Naomi Greaves.  We’d not really seen each other since doing a BTEC at Stafford College back in 199…7? So it was fab to catch up – and to discover she’s a talented printmaker who was running an inspiring monoprinting workshop alongside me!  I’d forgotten how much I LOVE carbon paper and the delicate crumbly lines it creates.

Stafford Arts Development Team support a wide range of interesting community-led activity across the county and evidence of this was on display throughout the day.  The highlight for me was an urban youth dance group who performed in front of the Shire Hall Gallery – and even inspired some visiting Spanish students to engage them in a dance-off!  Who knew luscious Staffordshire could also be so ‘street’?

'Sense of Place' is showing until the 12th September and is well worth a visit.  The Explore publication can be viewed online here and has loads of ideas for creative multisensory activities!

frilly summer sundays [#1]

The Wolverhampton City Show happens every year at West Park - an opportunity to see Monster Trucks, eat candy floss, win a stuffed animal that doubles as a fire hazard, and avoid the parachuting Royal Artillery.  Alongside all of this fun, Wolverhampton Arts and Museums have a stand every year where they engage members of the public in activities which link back in to their current or forthcoming exhibitions.

Alongside the rag rug demonstration run by ladies from Bantock House, we had a table set up with paper, pens, a couple of cameras, some dressing up props and a Pogo Polaroid portable printer.  Linking back in to the current exhibition, "Stories", we designed the activity around encouraging people to create their own imaginary characters/possible alter-egos/who they'd be as a superhero.

Passers-by were encouraged to rummage through our props to create a 'look' which we then photographed and printed off on the Pogo.  Whilst printing, we showed participants how to create a mini-book from a single sheet of A4 paper, and inside their books we encouraged them to draw or writing about all manner of imaginary people.  Once their image was printed, we fixed this to the front of their book which they could take with them or leave with us to help build a library of imaginary Wolverhampton people.

"Stories" is only on until the 4th September 2010 at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and is definitely worth a visit.  Inspired by childhood memories and fairytales, the artists involved in the show have created gigantic flowers, wax animals, book sculptures and large scale paintings.