Diary of an Exhibitionist #1

Late last year, I applied to this years Sculpture in the Sanctuary at Reg Taylor's Garden Centre in Southwell.  I'd visited it in 2009 with my son and some friends and I thoroughly loved it.  Here's a blog post I wrote about it after I had been and some pictures, conveniently put into a slideshow: Sculpture in the Sanctuary 2009

The organiser liked my work and I was very excited to have been offered the chance to exhibit there this year, so I went up last week to view the potential space.

As last time, as well as lots and lots of sculptures in the gorgeous Swan Sanctuary, there will be work in glasshouses, and this is the one I hope to display my work in:

A view of the glasshouse - look at all that light

That spot to the right of the path looks ideal

This was taken on a slightly dull day - as you can imagine, in summer, when the exhibition is running, it will be flooded with glorious sunshine. A lot of the lush, more established taller greenery will be staying, but the gravel beds on the floor, currently filled with lots of pots will be a lot clearer for our work.

I am thinking of some kind of free-standing structure,several panels, quite tall, so that for the top, you have to look up, and the light from the glass roof will shine through and highlight the texture.

One of my original textured panels

Maybe not green, with all that lush, but this sort of texture

Perhaps bold, contrasting colours

I'll probably be working with texture again, although I'll be thinking about the project brief/working titles over the next week or so to decide on what that will be.  I do think this kind of texture will work really well though, in colours, as with the right kind of light it will cast lots of interesting patterns and shadows.

Pimp Your Craft....

I've found my work, whether jewellery, wall art or glass dishes featured in Etsy Treasuries quite a lot lately - I've now clocked up 4 - here's a few current ones:

So, why this sudden flurry of activity you might wonder?

A few months ago, a friend of mine started up a new forum - Craft Pimp it's a fab place for all sorts of art and craft techniques, from glass, to ceramic, from paper to felt and fabric and much, much more.  Its a place to share work, ideas, inspirations... and everybody is so full of enthusiasm and have been having fun creating treasuries (an Etsy Treasury is a collection of up to 16 items selected from the thousands of handmade items for sale, usually themed - I personally love to see the colour collection ones) - sometimes promoting the Craft Pimp Team, but also sharing things they love from other makers on Etsy.

As a result of this, listed work gets seen by a wider audience.  Not just MY Facebook Fans, people watching MY Twitter timeline or people who have MY shop in their circle... all of those people who are in the treasury will share it with their friends, fans and followers... spreading out further.  I've noticed that I have been added to a couple of treasuries created by people that I have no apparent link with - they're not glass workers, or known members of either of the forums I frequent. 

They could have simply found my work by a tag search... but they may well have found me through friends of friends of friends.... either way, it means more visitors to my Etsy Shop, more hits on my website - so, I say, bring it on!

Contemporary Craft Exhibition

Should have posted this a bit sooner!  But my work is currently in an exhibition up Arkwrights Mill in Cromford, Derbyshire.

The gallery is a lovely room, and it features a group of former students University of Derby and  real mix of materials and work, its on until Thursday:  Contemporary Craft Exhibition

So a few pictures of the exhibition...

Some new work

my little corner

table close up

Nicola Lidstone & my work beyond

A view of the gallery

Sarah Jennings Work

Latest experiments

This is actually going back to experiment some more with work I've 'played' with before - I am now looking at ways it can be displayed, put together to make pieces suitable for craft exhibitions, playing with light...

This kind of texture was on of my first encounters with glass, many moons ago - and I starting trying it with coloured glass at Uni... but other 'stuff' took over (namely an extremely large piece of wall art that weighed 50 kilos and was my degree show piece....

I wanted to make something for the Contemporary Craft Exhibition this weekend, that tied together the style of the ceramic wall art I've been doing, with the glass.  I think this may be it!  This involves the use of mirrors to accentuate the texture.

Hope people like this idea....