All New Blog...

If you haven't visited for a while, don't forget I am now updating my new blog which is fully integrated with my website now:

Dawn Turner Designs - Blog Page

New Fusing Workshop Dates

I am now starting to add some new dates to my website, here: Workshop Dates - more to be added later.

And, I am trying something new!  You can now book and pay for your workshop directly through Eventbrite, simply by clicking here:

Saturday, 28th September:


Sunday, 6th October:
 

New Post on the New Blog

Just a quick post and run, to remind that I am now starting to use my new blog site....

The New Blog Page

Fossil Walls...

For the last six weeks, I've been working in various primary schools in the local area.

We've been making 'fossil walls' - a process that I happened upon almost accidentally that gave some rather surprising and lovely results - modern day (or any) objects, cast, and because of the sand used in the process, I thought they looked like fossils.

Each school chose their own designs and ideas.  Some of the schools I went into chose to do individual blocks, where the children brought in items that were important or significant to them; others wanted to leave a 'legacy' for other children coming up through the years with their words of wisdom (quite interesting choices from 10 year olds!).  We also have done some plaques on based on areas of the curriculum, as well as designs based on school logos and mottos.

In all schools, the children actually got very involved with the making - from deciding what went into each design, to piling sand into containers and finding objects to insert.  There's some of the more technical and Health and Safety stuff I've had to do myself of course, but I've tried to let the children participate as much as possible - this is their work.  Oh, and in most schools, I've had some lovely able helpers at the end of each day to tidy up.

It's been great fun, if hard work; the children have been a delight with their wit, intelligence, creative thinking, helpfulness and politeness.

Here's a couple of examples below.   I am looking forward to them all being dried out enough to seal and getting them installed to decorate all the school spaces (even if that's more work for me!)

Curriculum and classroom names

Einstein said...

Inspired by the school logo

What subject?

Words of Wisdom from Year 6

Don't forget, I will be blogging from my new website directly soon, so if you've got following software, don't forget to bookmark it here: New Blog Page

Time For A Fresh New Look

I first created my website back four years ago as part of my final year degree course - I was very proud of it, as it was all hand-coded by me.  It was quick, logical and worked well.

But... adding new photos was not always so easy, so I've been re-developing my site in the 'background' for months now.  And it has been almost ready for ages too, just waiting for those final tweaks.

This weekend, I decided it was now or never, and launched the new look.  There are still a few areas that need filling out, but maybe now it's live I will actually do that!  You can still click  through to the new look site using the links at the left - it is still at the same web address.  You might need to refresh your page if you've visited the old site before, it might have it in your 'cache' - on Windows, it's 'CTRL+F5'.

There is a blog page within the actual site, which for now, has just got all the previous posts from this blog imported - but soon I will be writing new blog posts within the website, rather than separately so if you use any form of following software (or indeed you link to my blog on your own website/blog) you might want to add the new page to your RSS/feed reader now for when that gets under way:

MY NEW BLOG PAGE


Hope you like the new site, and I do hope you will carry on following my random and somewhat intermittent lately (!) blog posts in future

Wow, what a difference colour makes!

I recently posted a couple of photograms that I'd started with my AA2A research.

So, I did a couple of sessions in black and white before Chris, the technician showed me how to do colour printing (well, technically, didn't show me, as unlike with B&W where you can expose and print using the red safe-light, with colour you have to work in complete darkness as anything you can see, the paper can see.  As you can imagine, its not exactly easy lining stuff up, fumbling around and getting the exposed paper into the print developer doodah thingy, which has to be the right way up....

I've absolutely loved exploring the photo-grams, and really wish I could do more.  Have so many ideas on how it could be expanded further, by using different combinations of glass, whether that be shape, pattern or colour, but also would love to explore scale.

Alas, I ran out of time, and we have our exhibition opening next week, so I've had to bite the bullet and work with what I have already got.  I won't show you everything just yet, as there's an exhibition at the University of Derby for that purpose, but here's a few of my favourites (including a couple more B&W for interest!)

Metal Ages.... and it has been ages!!

If there's an award for bad blogger of the year, I think I would certainly be in the running!

There's been so much going off.   In March, Gavin and myself did some workshops in schools - this produced some fantastic work, including glass, metal embossing and casting - hopefully I can show you some of the work at a later point.  Who cares about chronological order?

I managed to get a few more sessions in at university doing photograms, and I was very sad when this came to an end - I feel like I've still got so much more to explore, but I need access to the darkrooms to be able to develop (hahaha) this further.  Do you think they'd notice if I just wandered in.... we've got the AA2A exhibition soon, I have to be ready by the end of next week.

We held the spring Open Studios at Shed 2 as part of Derbyshire Open Arts.  I managed to squeeze in a visit to Chelsea 100th Flower Show to help Rachel Carter - unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of chance to look round as it rained. And rained again.   And rained some more.  You get the idea.

However, I was very excited last week that we were able to install the first Metal Ages sculpture at the King George Gallery.  That's the Royal "we" - as in Gavin and his builder dug holes, heaved the thing around, and poured in post-crete, whilst I stood on the side-lines saying left a bit, right a bit and taking photographs.

I think it looks amazing.  I love the combination of new glass and old metal.  I love what Gavin has done with the found objects from the Stanton site, combined with donated tools from our walks and meets we did way back in February and March.

Anyway, here it is - the second sculpture should be installed fairly soon, more on that later!

An overview - slightly over exposed, but had to show you the beautiful settings:

The beautiful King George Gallery building

My glass element

Found metal objects from Stanton Ironworks

Donated tools from former workers

The glass set into the Stanton Arrow

"OLD MEN & PIPES"